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SUBCONSCIOUS 
PHENOMENA 

BY 

HUGO MUNSTERBERG 
THEODORE RIBOT 

PIERRE JANET 

JOSEPH JASTROW 

BERNARD HART 

AND 

MORTON PRINCE 



BOSTON 

RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 
I9IO 



Copyright, 1910, by Richard G. Badger 



All Rights reserved 



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The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



©CI.A268i^6 



CONTENTS 

Chapter One 
The Subconscious — Part i i6 

Chapter Two 
The Subconscious — Part 2 33 

Chapter Three 
The Subconscious — Part 3 40 

Chapter Four 
The Subconscious — Part 4 53 

Chapter Five 
The Subconscious — Part 5 71 

Chapter Six 
The Conception of the Subconscious. . . 102 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 



Subconscious Phenomena 



INTRODUCTION 

THERE is at present no consensus 
of opinion, either among psy- 
chologists who deal with the 
normal, or among the medical 
psychologists who deal with the 
abnormal, as to the class of phenomena to 
which the term "subconscious" shall be ap- 
plied, or, as to the interpretation of these 
phenomena. Thus, few writers mean the 
same thing by "subconscious," and even when 
two writers agree upon the same psychologi- 
cal interpretation of given phenomena each 
is likely to describe different sets of phe- 
nomena under the term. It has seemed ac- 
cordingly to the Editor that a symposium in 
which those who deal with the normal and 
abnormal might thresh out the difference of 
views would be timely and might help to an 
agreement in terminology at least and possi- 
bly in interpretation. 

The following general statement of the 

9 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

present terminology and meaning of the sub- 
conscious will be of assistance to the general 
reader in following the discussion in this and 
the next number. Professor Miinsterberg 
has very clearly stated the three dominant 
theories of the subconscious backed respec- 
tively by laymen, physicians and psycholo- 
gists, and it is well that these three be kept 
well in the foreground of the discussion. Per- 
haps these three types are sufficient for a 
discussion in a symposium, and yet, there are 
three other meanings of the subconscious, 
one or other of which is held by individual 
writers and of which the reader should be 
reminded at least. These six may be sum- 
marized thus : First, it is used to describe that 
portion of our field of consciousness which, 
at any given moment, is outside the focus of 
our attention; a region therefore, as it is 
conceived, of diminished attention. Subcon- 
sciousness here, therefore, means the margi- 
nal states or fringe of consciousness of any 
given moment, and the prefix sub designates 
the diminished or partial awareness that we 
have for these states out in the corner of our 
mind's eye. 

The second meaning (Professor Miinster- 

10 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

berg's second type) involves a theory which 
is an interpretation of the facts. It is with 
this meaning particularly that the term is 
used in abnormal psychology. Subconscious 
ideas are dissociated or split-off ideas; split 
off from the main personal consciousness, 
from the focus of attention — if that term be 
preferred — in such fashion that the subject 
is entirely unaware of them, though they are 
not inert but active. These split-off ideas 
may be limited to isolated sensations, like 
the lost tactile sensations of anesthesia; or 
may be aggregated into groups or systems. 
In other words, they form a consciousness 
coexisting with the primary consciousness, 
and thereby a doubling of consciousness re- 
sults. The split-off consciousness may dis- 
play extraordinary activity. The primary 
personal consciousness as a general rule is 
of course the main and larger consciousness; 
but under exceptional conditions, as in some 
types of automatic writing, the personal con- 
sciousness may be reduced to rudimentary 
proportions, while the secondary conscious- 
ness may rob the former of the greater part 
of its faculties and become the dominant con- 
sciousness. 

II 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

The third meaning (Professor Miinster- 
berg's first type) is an elaboration and ex- 
tension of the second, and thus becomes a 
theory which not only gives an elaborate in- 
terpretation of the facts of observation, but 
becomes a broad generalization in that it 
propounds a principle of both normal and 
abnormal life. Under it the dissociated states 
become synthesized among themselves into a 
large self-conscious personality, to which the 
term "self" is given. Subconscious states 
thus become personified and are spoken of 
as the "subconscious self," "subliminal self," 
"hidden self," "secondary self," etc.; and 
this subconscious self is conceived of as mak- 
ing up a part of every human mind, 
whether normal or abnormal, and is sup- 
posed to play a very large part in our mental 
life. Thus every mind is double; not in the 
moderate sense of two trains of thought go- 
ing on at the same time, or being engaged 
with two distinct and separate series of ac- 
tions at the same time; or even in the sense 
of there being certain limited discreet per- 
ceptions of w^hich the personal consciousness 
is not aware; but in the sense of having two 
selves which are often given special domains 

12 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

of their own and spoken of as upper and 
lower ; the waking and submerged selves, etc. 
This theory, therefore, not only extends the 
principle of dissociated ideas into normal life 
and makes these constant elements of the hu- 
man mind, but enlarges the subconscious syn- 
thesis into something that is self-conscious 
and which can speak of itself as an "I." 

The fourth meaning of subconscious is that 
which by definition would have it include; 
first, the dissociated ideas embraced under 
the second definition above stated; and sec- 
^fond, all those past conscious experiences 
which are either forgotten and can not be 
recalled, or which may be recalled as mem- 
ories, but for the moment are out of mind 
because in the march of events our thoughts 
have passed on and we are thinking about 
something else. All these potential mem- 
ories are placed in the subconscious which 
plainly is thus made to define two classes of 
facts; namely, dissociated states which are 
active, and those which are inactive, i. e., 
forgotten, or out of mind (Sidis' definition). 

The fifth use of the term (Myers' doc- 
trine) is an expansion of the third meaning 
and involves a metaphysical doctrine which 
13 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

transcends all facts which one can possibly 
observe in others or introspect in himself. It 
is more specifically described as the "sublimi- 
nal,'* which is used as a synonym for subcon- 
scious. The subconscious ideas, instead of 
being mental states dissociated from the 
main personality, now become the main res- 
ervoir of consciousness and the personal con- 
sciousness becomes a subordinate stream 
flowing out of this great storage basis of 
"subliminal" ideas as they are called. We 
have within us a great tank of consciousness 
but we are conscious of only a small portion 
of its contents. In other words, of the sum 
total of conscious states within us only a 
small portion forms the personal conscious- 
ness. The personal self becomes even an in- 
ferior consciousness emerging out of a su- 
perior subliminal consciousness sometimes 
conceived as part of a transcendental world, 
and this subliminal consciousness is made the 
source of flights of genius on the one hand, 
while it controls the physical processes of the 
body on the other. 

The sixth meaning (Professor Miinster- 
berg's third type) of the term is an interpre- 
tation on pure physiological principles of the 
14 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

phenomena customarily attributed to the ac- 
tivity of dissociated ideas. Some psycholo- 
gists believe that phenomena like automatic 
writing and speech, the so-called subconscious 
solution of arithmetical problems, hysterical 
outbursts, etc., can be best explained as pure 
neural processes unaccompanied by any men- 
tation whatsoever. These phenomena be- 
come therefore pure physiological organic 
processes of the body. The term subcon- 
scious thus becomes equivalent to the old 
theory of Carpenter's "unconscious cerebra- 
tion. 



15 



CHAPTER ONE 

BY HUGO MUNSTERBERG 
Professor of Psychology, Harvard 

THE few pages which a symposium 
allows do not give opportunity 
to sift the material which has 
led to the doctrine of the sub- 
liminal consciousness. My prac- 
tical studies in hypnotism, hysteria, automat- 
ic writing and similar abnormalities suggest 
to me decided hesitation in accepting the 
whole of the usual evidence without cross-ex- 
amination. And yet, to find a common basis 
for a theoretical inquiry, it certainly seems 
wiser not to quarrel about the experiences but 
rather to accept the facts as the most san- 
guine observer might present them. 

Yet, even if we welcome the observed facts 
in their widest limits, there can be no doubt 
that the subconscious itself is never among 
them. The facts which we find must be eith- 
er conscious psychical facts from which we 
draw inferences as to subconscious psychical 
i6 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

states, or physical expressions which cannot 
be explained by conscious ideas, emotions, 
volitions, and which thus demand not-con- 
scious factors for their explanation. The 
conscious experience of crystal-vision or of 
remembering the tactual experiences of an 
anaesthetic hand or the sudden solution of a 
problem which had slipped from conscious- 
ness, or, if you will, every act of genius may 
point to such hypothetical subconscious pro- 
cesses, but certainly the conscious seeing and 
remembering and solving is given, while the 
subconscious is constructed for purposes of 
explanation. In the same way the physical 
processes of automatic writing or of hysteric 
action are observable; the subconscious agen- 
cies are super-added elaborations. 

To acknowledge that the subconscious is 
found only through constructions in the ser- 
vice of explanation does not detract from its 
scientific reality; the fluid core of the earth is 
of the same logical type. But such acknowl- 
edgment does imply that the only correct 
question is this : which of the many construc- 
tions of the not-conscious causes is most use- 
ful for the explanation of the observed facts ? 
It is evident, however, that the preference 

17 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

for one construction or another may and 
must be influenced by various sidefactors. 
When, for instance, the physician approaches 
those facts, his interest tends naturally to 
their practical treatment. He thus shapes 
his constructions in a way which brings the 
differences from normal mental life to the 
clearest relief and which offers a simple 
working description, definite enough to de- 
termine beforehand the events to be expected 
in the behavior of the patient. When on the 
other hand the layman comes to the same 
facts, he is struck bytheir surprising character 
and this wonder awakes the feeling of the 
general mysteriousness of the world; he thus 
tends to prefer a construction which explains 
the observed facts in a way that leads at the 
same time to the satisfaction of higher de- 
sires, perhaps even of religious emotions. 
W^hen, finally, the theoretical psychologist 
approaches the same facts, he has in mind no 
therapeutical treatment or emotional de- 
mand, and yet he too looks out far beyond 
the curious facts themselves; his interest is 
turned toward the remainder of mental life, 
and he thus prefers explanations which bring 
the abnormal facts in closest relation to the 
i8 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

normal processes and cover both by the same 
formulae. 

We therefore find three types of theories, 
the first backed mostly by laymen, the sec- 
ond by physicians, the third by psychologists. 
Yet the lines are not to be drawn sharply. 
That first group says : the subconsciousness is 
the psychical system of a full real personality 
below the conscious person ; that subconscious 
self remembers, thinks, feels, wills on its own 
accord, influences our conscious life, helps it 
out, shines through it and causes the abnor- 
mal facts. The popular mind clings to such 
a convenient method of explanation the more 
closely as It is on this basis easy to bring the 
subconscious selves into telepathic connection 
or to link them with mystical agencies. The 
second group says: the subconscious is psy- 
chical but not a system, it is made up of ideas, 
but they do not at first form a personality; it 
is dissociated split off mental material which 
only in a secondary way may flow together 
into a new detached self. The subconscious 
is then not at all a regular psychical founda- 
tion but something either pathological or at 
least artificial. The third group, finally, 
says : the subconscious that underlies the ab- 

19 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

normal facts is the same that underlies the 
ordinary processes of memory, attention, 
etc. : it is not psychical at all but a physiologi- 
cal brain process. 

The emotional demands of the mystic, the 
practical demands of the physician, and the 
theoretical demands of the psychologist are 
well fulfilled by these three types of theories, 
and to a certain extent they can be helpful 
side by side; the purpose which we have be- 
fore us determines each time which of the 
three modes of construction is most useful 
for our special end. At least the second 
theory finds points of contact with each of 
the others. With the first it shares the belief 
that the subconscious is psychical, while the 
one conceives it as systematized, the other as 
dissociated. With the third it shares the con- 
viction that there is no independent self be- 
low the consciousness, while the one calls the 
underlying processes psychical, the other phy- 
siological. This latter difference does not de- 
ter the friends of the second theory from ad- 
mitting also a physiological .basis for the 
subconscious ideas, nor the adherents of the 
third theory from using psychological terms 
like idea, emotion, volition, for the short de- 
20 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

scription of those complex physiological 
events as if they were accompanied by psychi- 
cal phenomena. Yet, the difference of prin- 
ciple remains, and if I have to choose, I feel 
inclined to take the place with the psychol- 
ogists in the third group; the subconscious is 
not psychical at all. 

I point here only to the most general rea- 
sons which determine my decision. The ex- 
planations which every theory of the sub- 
conscious offers are twofold. There is firstly 
a reservoir which keeps the subconscious 
ideas, and secondly a mental workshop which 
manufactures the products of thought as far 
as they are not elaborated consciously. The 
reservoir, full of dissociated ideas, has to 
explain the occurrence of strange conscious 
ideas and of otherwise surprising behavior. 
The workshop has to explain the conscious 
results of the evidently synthetic labor which 
goes on independently of our conscious con- 
trol. What is that reservoir? Of course, if 
we call it a reservoir of ideas we have yielded 
the whole point; ideas are of mental stuff. 
Students of abnormal psychology here in- 
dulge in the same type of circular conclusion 
which is frequent with animal psychologists. 

21 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

The latter reason that animals of a certain 
development must have consciousness be- 
cause they have memory. Memory is of 
course a psychological expression, and the 
question is just whether the behavior of those 
animals has to be explained psychologically 
by memory or physiologically by an after- 
effect of earlier stimulations. The decision 
whether the one mode of explanation or other 
is to be applied cannot itself be deduced from 
the observed facts, but must precede the study 
of the facts; with other words: the question 
whether animals have consciousness or not 
cannot be answered by observation but be- 
longs to epistemological arguments. In the 
same way here; no fact of abnormal experi- 
ence can by itself prove that a psychological 
and not a physiological explanation is 
needed; it is a philosophical problem which 
must be settled by principle before the ex- 
planation of the special facts begins. 

To make the explanation dependent on the 
special abnormal facts is the more unjustified 
as the situation is in no way different from 
that of ordinary memory. If I reproduce 
by association a name or a landscape seen ten 
years ago I can postulate too that all this was 

22 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

lying in me as a subconscious idea or at least 
as a mental disposition and that it could not 
be reproduced if something on the psychical 
side were not lasting through those ten years 
outside of my consciousness. But those who 
insist that the memory idea presupposes a 
lasting mental disposition and cannot be ex- 
plained by physiological after-effect, only for- 
get that the same logic would demand a spec- 
ial mental disposition also for each new per- 
ception. The whole "mystery" of an idea 
entering into consciousness presents itself 
perfectly every time when we use our eyes or 
ears, and it is astonishing how easily psychol- 
ogists overlook the parallelism of the prob- 
lems in regular perception, in ordinary mem- 
ory and in the abnormal awakening of disso- 
ciated ideas. To say that the perceptive idea 
too finds a special psychical disposition would 
be absurd, as we should then need such sub- 
conscious mental agency for every possible 
impression, and if every possible impression 
is equally prepared in the subconscious the 
appearance of no one would really find its 
explanation as every other would have the 
same chance. In the case of the perception 
we are thus obliged to rest in the explanation 
23 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

of a psychical idea by a physical brain pro- 
cess only. But if the fresh idea is dependent 
only on the fresh excitement in the brain, 
there is not the slightest additional difficulty 
in interpreting by the same principle the re- 
current idea of memory by the recurrent 
brain process without any reference to a last- 
ing psychical trace. And if the normal mem- 
ory can work without subconscious mental 
help, there is no reason suddenly to presup- 
pose it for the abnormal awaking of appar- 
ently unaccountable ideas as in crystal vision 
and a hundred similar phenomena. The illu- 
sions of the ordinary memory easily lead 
over from the normal reproduction to the 
pathological. Brain processes without sub- 
conscious psychical forerunners furnish all 
that we need in the abnormal cases for the 
same kind of understanding which science 
has for seeing and hearing. 

But if we have no reservoir with stored-up 
subconscious ideas, we cannot have a work- 
shop either to prepare therein subconsciously 
combinations of subliminal material. It is 
again the physiological action which is entire- 
ly sufficient to explain just as much as the 
mental mechanism could explain. Of course 
24 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

popular science turns naturally to psychical 
conceptions first, because those hidden pro- 
cesses which we must presuppose to explain 
the conscious results are thoroughly pur- 
posive and selective. But have we really a 
right to insist that purpose and selection re- 
fer necessarily to psychical factors and are 
incomparable with physiological processes? 
On the contrary, whenever purpose means as 
it does mean in this case a certain adaptation 
to the ends of the individual we must ac- 
knowledge that every organism shows such 
purposiveness. When the body digests a meal 
a hundred thousand cells are performing the 
most complex acts for the purposes of the 
organism, and they select the right chemical 
processes more safely than any chemist 
would be able to do ; yet nobody presupposes 
that there is a mental interplay in the intes- 
tines. In the same way all the other tissues 
are performing adjusted acts by physiologi- 
cal causes : have we any reason to expect less 
from the tissues of the central nervous sys- 
tem? Why cannot they too produce physio- 
logical processes that lead to well-adjusted 
results and that means to apparently pur- 
posive sensorial excitements and motor im- 
25 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

pulses. But we must go much further still. 
Not only that the physiological cerebration 
is well able to produce the "intellectual" re- 
sult, but the physiological side alone is fit for 
it, the psychological is utterly unfit. To the 
popular mind that statement seems of course 
absurd, and indeed it needs some philosophi- 
cal insight into the logic of sciences to appre- 
ciate the situation. To bring it to short for- 
mulation, of course without full argument, 
we might characterize it as follows. Our in- 
ner life is a system of attitudes, of purposes, 
of will. But it is not for psychology to deal 
with the inner life in its immediate teleologi- 
cal reality. This real life and its real inner 
connectedness demand for their understand- 
ing our interpretation and appreciation it is 
furnished for instance by the student of his- 
tory or of philosophy. Psychology, on the 
other hand, is a science which aims at descrip- 
tion and explanation of inner life, a logical 
attitude which is artificial. Psychology con- 
siders the inner experience , therefore, for its 
special purpose as a series of describable 
phenomena; it transforms the felt realities of 
will into perceivable objects, into contents of 
consciousness. Through this transformation 
26 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

the real purposlveness, yes, the whole inner 
connection of the will acts is eliminated; the 
psychological phenomena as such have no in- 
tentions and no significance any more but are 
merely bits of lifeless mental material, com- 
ple:k:es of unphysical objects made up of ele- 
ments which we call sensations. And this 
material which, through the objectification, 
has lost all its inner teleological ties, has not 
even the chance to enter into any direct cau- 
sal connections. The physical phenomena 
can and must be conceived as causally con- 
nected, the psychical not. There cannot be 
causality where the objects do not last but 
are destroyed in the very act of their appear- 
ance; just this is characteristic of all psycho- 
logical contents. The world is physical, in so 
far as we conceive it as identical with itself 
in ever new experiences, and to elaborate this 
self-identity of the material universe is the 
meaning of the causal treatment. The ob- 
ject is psychical just in so far as it is not iden- 
tical in new experiences, but is created anew 
in every act. Therefore there is no direct 
causal connection of the psychologized in- 
ner life; therefore there is only an indirect 
causal explanation of psychical phenomena 
27 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

possible in so far as they can be conceived as 
accompaniments of physiological processes. 
In short, even the full conscious mental facts 
do not really hang together when viev/ed 
from a psychological point of view and are 
thus unfit to explain any results through their 
causal interplay; they are epiphenomena, and 
the causal working of the objectified con- 
scious facts goes on in the physiological sub- 
stratum. How misleading, therefore, to in- 
vent and to construct subconscious psychical 
phenomena for the express purpose of pro- 
ducing causal results instead of leaving that 
to the safe action of the cerebrum. The only 
motive for doing it is the popular confusion, 
— certainly not unfrequent even among psy- 
chologists, — which does not discriminate be- 
tween the psychological material as part of 
the world of phenomena and the teleological 
significance of our inner life in the world of 
meaning. The will as purpose binds by its 
meaning the facts of immediate life together 
and enters as such into ethics or law or his- 
tory, but the will as psychological content of 
consciousness does not bind anything and 
does not point to anything beyond itself; it is 
pimply a passing phenomenon. And yet only 
28 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

in this unreal form, constructed by abstrac- 
tions and conceptions, the will can enter into 
the system of descriptive and explanatory 
science. In the explanatory system of psy- 
chology the purpose as such does thus not 
explain anything, just as astronomy has 
learned that the sixteenth century mixed the 
categories when the beauty of certain astron- 
omical curves was taken as the actual cause 
for certain astronomical movements. 

There is thus no reason to conceive a psy- 
chical fact existing outside of consciousness, 
— and that corresponds to the only significant 
meaning of consciousness. Consciousness is 
nothing which can be added to the existing 
mental facts, but it indicates just the existence 
of the psychical phenomena. Consciousness 
cannot do anything, cannot look here and 
there and shine on some ideas and leave oth- 
ers without illumination. No, consciousness 
means merely the logical relation point of its 
contents; the psychical phenomena are in 
consciousness as the physical phenomena are 
in nature; there cannot be physical phenom- 
ena outside of nature. Seen in this way the 
psychologist must sharply separate those 
pathological cases which really show posi- 
29 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

tlve abnormal phenomena in the conscious 
facts themselves and those which from the 
standpoint of consciousness present negative 
occurrences only, — blanks where ideas are 
expected. To the first class belongs, for in- 
stance, the alternating personality; that is an 
abnormal grouping of psychical experiences. 
To the second class belong all those various 
phenomena which give rise to the theory of 
dissociated or automatic subconscious psychi- 
cal processes. The dissociated idea is psy- 
chologically not existent just as the ticking of 
the clock in my room does not exist for me 
when my attention is turned to my reading; 
the ticking reaches my brain and may there 
have after-effects, but the sound-sensation is 
inhibited. In this way all that which sug- 
gested the theory of the mental subconscious 
becomes simply increased or decreased inhibi- 
tion. Why the mental accompaniments of 
certain physiological processes are some- 
times inhibited must of course itself be ex- 
plained physiologically; everything seems to 
point to the relation between sensory excite- 
ment and the openness or closedness of the 
motor channels of discharge. 

It is true that such physiological explana- 
30 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

tion gives small foothold for that mystical 
expansion of the theory which seemed so eas 
Ily reached from the subconscious mental 
life. But It Is not the least merit of the 
scientific physiological explanation that It ob- 
structs the path of such pseudophilosophy. 
Psychology even If it takes in psychological 
phenomena which lie under the cover of the 
subconscious, can never be the starting point 
for a metaphysical view of reality because, 
as we pointed out, the psychological material 
has been reached by an artificial transforma- 
tion of the real life experience. The psycho- 
logical phenomena are as unreal as the atoms 
which mathematical physics constructs for its 
logical purposes. If we seek real philosophy 
we must go back to the true Immediate will 
experience out of which the psychological 
constructions are shaped but which is as such 
not possible object of description. An inter- 
pretation and appreciative understanding of 
this real life, even in the most idealistic phil- 
osophy, can then never conflict even with the 
most radical physiological explanation of ab- 
normal psychology. The physiological psy- 
chologist thus ought carefully to avoid the 
language of the subliminal self theory as It 

31 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

flows over too easily into antiphilosophy. 
But he has no reason to avoid the language 
of the dissociated-idea, theory — provided 
that the psychological word is taken as a 
short label for the very complex neural phy- 
siological process. If I had to write the his- 
tory of Miss Beauchamp I should conceive 
all subconscious processes in physiological 
conceptions, but I should describe them, for 
clearness and convenience sake, as the mas- 
ter of our symposium has so masterly done, 
in the terms of psychological language. 



32 



CHAPTER TWO 

BY THEODORE RIBOT 
Professor of Psychology, College de France 

THE question of the subconscious is 
so broad, so complex and so ob- 
scure that I shall be content if, 
in the brief remarks which fol- 
low, I succeed in throwing even 
a little light upon it. 

In this question we must distinguish two 
sides: the positive, composed of facts; and 
the hypothetical made up of theories. 

With regard to the facts, I find it advan- 
tageous to establish two categories: 

First: The static subconscious, comprising 
habits, memory and, in general, all organized 
knowledge. It is a state of conservatism, of 
repose (albeit relative), since representa- 
tions undergo incessant corrosions and meta- 
morphoses within themselves. 

Second: The dynamic subconscious which 
is a latent state of activity, of incubation and 
elaboration. Authors who have treated this 

33 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

subject, have furnished examples of it in pro- 
fusion. From this source comes inventive 
work, inspiration in all sorts of discoveries, 
improvisation and even — to a feebler degree 
and in a more modest form — sudden repar- 
tee and bons mots; in short everything which 
sparkles forth from us spontaneously. 

Naturally, discussion and conjecture have 
focussed by preference upon the subconscious 
processes we call "dynamic," since these are 
the most varied and the most fertile in re- 
sults. 

On the nature of this subconscious activity, 
however, one finds only discord and obscur- 
ity. "Doubtless, one may maintain that, in 
the case of the inventor, everything goes on 
in the subconscious as it does ordinarily in 
consciousness itself, barring a message which 
does not reach the e^o; that the work which 
one may follow in consciousness, with its ad- 
vances and its retrocessions, is identical with 
what goes on without our knowledge. Such 
an hypothesis is possible, but far from 
proved. 

Again, concerning the essential nature of 
subconscious activity, two diametrically op- 
posed theories have been put forward : 
34 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

The first (Myers, Delboeuf and other 
more recent authors) bears the stamp of a 
peculiar biologic mysticism. According to 
these authors, in certain men subconscious 
activity is invested with almost supernatural 
power, not only of a trophic and physio- 
logic, but also of a psychologic order, and 
constitutes in the individual an intermediate 
link between the human and the divine. 

The second, which has attained its most 
complete expression in Boris Sidis' book on 
suggestion, draws this picture of our subcon- 
scious, which is far from flattering: it (the 
subconscious) is stupid, uncritical, extremely 
credulous, without morality, and its principal 
mental mechanism is that of the brute — asso- 
ciation by contiguity. 

In my opinion two such hypotheses are not 
at bottom irreconcilable, since the above ad- 
vantages and defects make an integral part 
of human nature taken in its totality, and 
since they are unequally distributed among 
men. A much more important question, how- 
ever, is that of the ultimate nature of sub- 
conscious activity. Although many authors 
have tried to evade it by enveloping it in ob- 
scurity and doubt, it comes back to this inex- 
35 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

orable dilemma, — psychologic or physiolog- 
ic? 

The psychologic solution rests upon an 
equivocal use of the word conscious. The 
conscious bears an unvarying stamp : it is an 
internal event, which exists, not in itself, but 
for me and in so far as it is recognized by 
me. Now, this solution admits that, if from 
the clear realm of consciousness one descends 
to the "marginal" consciousness and finally 
continues to go lower and lower to the un- 
conscious, which only manifests itself by mo- 
tor reactions, the primitive state thus impov- 
erished continues to remain to the end identi- 
cal in its essence with the conscious. Under- 
lying the psychologic theory, in all its forms, 
there is the tacit hypothesis that the conscious 
is assimilable to a quantity which may de- 
crease indefinitely without ever reaching 
zero. It is a postulate which nothing justi- 
fies. The experience of psychophysicians 
with regard to the "threshold" of the con- 
scious, without settling the question, would 
rather justify the contrary opinion: the per- 
ceptible minimum appears and disappears 
brusquely. This fact and others which 
might easily be pointed out seem to me un- 

36 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

favorable to the hypothesis of the increasing 
or decreasing continuity of the conscious. 

The physiologic solution is simple and 
comprises few variants. It maintains that 
subconscious activity Is purely cerebral; the 
psychic factor which ordinarily accompanies 
the work of the nervous centres Is absent. I 
Incline toward this hypothesis, without dis- 
regarding its shortcomings and Its difficul- 
ties ; but, at least, it seems to me not contra- 
dictory as is the adverse hypothesis. It has 
been established by numerous experiences 
(Fere, BInet, Mosso, Janet, Newbold, etc.) 
that unconscious sensations (not apper- 
celved) act, since they produce the same re- 
action as conscious sensation, and Mosso has 
been able to maintain "that the testimony of 
consciousness is less reliable than that of the 
sphygmograph," but there are cases more 
complex. For Instance, that of Invention Is 
quite different, for it does not merely sup- 
pose the adaptation to an end which the phy- 
siologic factor would suffice to explain; it Im- 
plies a series of adaptations, corrections, and 
rational operations whose nervous action of 
Itself furnishes us but few examples. In 
spite of everything, I am coming more and 

37 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

more to the side of the physiologic hypothesis 
and am quite in accord with the opinion re- 
cently set forth in America by Jastrow, and 
more clearly by A. H. Pierce in his "Studies 
in Philosophy and Psychology" (1906), in 
which he has presented in favor of the cere- 
bral interpretation such an excellent plea that 
further attempts in this line seem to me use- 
less. 

There still remains the question of double 
personality, or to be more exact, of multiple 
personality. 

At the present time the majority of psy- 
chologists admit that the ego^ the person, is a 
synthetical complex, which in its normal 
state, is made up of relatively stable ele- 
ments, in spite of incessant variations. In 
the abnormal cases, when a new personality 
arises, one can scarcely doubt that the sub- 
conscious lends its aid to its formation; on 
the one hand, in its static form, by the resur- 
rection of habits or of memories which 
seemed lost; on the other hand, in the appari- 
tion of intellectual or moral dispositions — 
higher or lower, good or evil, — which, latent 
until then, characterize the new ego. 

This psychologic problem is nevertheless 

38 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

quite different from that concerning the na- 
ture of the subconscious. This new synthe- 
sis, of which the subconscious furnishes only 
the materials (and these only in part), de- 
pends upon profound causes, probably phy- 
siologic, having their roots in cenesthesia. 
Whatever opinion one may emit upon this 
last cause, it is a distinct study which begins 
here; subconscious processes play a role 
which is secondary and subordinate and are, 
properly speaking, a result, an effect. 



39 



CHAPTER THREE 

BY JOSEPH JASTROW 

Professor of Psychology, University of Wis- 
consin 

TO one who has devoted a volume* 
to an exposition of subconscious 
phenomena, the invitation to 
contribute to a symposium is 
naturally interpreted as a re- 
quest for a statement of the underlying and 
supporting conceptions of the work in ques- 
tion. The difficulty in meeting this request 
is inherent in the phenomena themselves ; for 
it is the nature of these to require delicate 
shadings and gradings and all the complex 
blendings of a difficult chiaroscuro, in order 
to shape the resulting delineation into a sig- 
nificant picture. Yet when addressed to 
those who are familiar with the picture and 
its genre, and equally with the elements and 

*The Subconscious. Part three is especially germane 
to the considerations here presented. 
40 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

the technique of the composition, a sketch 
with reenforced contours and unconcern for 
transitions and corrections will meet with 
ready interpretation. 

I deem it a fundamental requisite of any 
adequate conception of the subconscious that 
it makes vital connection with the ordinary 
range of normal mental procedure, finding 
a natural place in an evolutionary interpreta- 
tion of psychic function, and interpretable 
likewise in (general) terms of neural dispo- 
sition. Such conception finds an equal obliga- 
tion to discover and decipher within the 
range of normal fluctuations, a great diversi- 
ty of relations, — of excess and abeyance, of 
distortion, temperamental facilitation and 
exaggeration and impediment, — that suggest 
unmistakably the minor abnormalities of sub- 
conscious function. It is difficult to overem- 
phasize the significance of this intermediate 
realm. There are to be sought the sources 
of the streams, whose waters in turbulent 
confusion break through their normally con- 
fining channels in seeming lusus naturae. 
With these obligations fairly met, the con- 
ception may confidently yet tactfully enter the 
perplexing field of the abnormal, and in so 
41 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

doing will be disposed to emphasize once 
more the transitory, superficial, introspective- 
ly controllable procedures, that in their es- 
trangement maintain some correspondence, 
— fragmentary, uncertain, elusive, or even in- 
coherent in part though it be — with the nor- 
mal home relations. Thus rooted firmly in 
normal procedure, the conception may under- 
take the special analysis of the complexly ab- 
normal. 

The aspect of the resulting conception 
would admittedly be seriously altered if it 
should prove necessary in order to account 
for the abnormal varieties of experience, to 
assume a system of psychic relations in en- 
largement or correction of those seemingly 
adequate for normal psychology, and then 
in turn to revise the current psychological 
conception by a restatement in the light of 
the abnormal. Those who feel themselves 
forced by logical considerations or impelled 
by temperamental or philosophical prefer- 
ence to have recourse to such a remodeling 
of psychological relations have for the most 
part — and with wide diversity among them- 
selves — proposed some form of secondary 
consciousness, coordinate or subordinate al- 
42 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ter ego, subliminal self. Finding, notably in 
cases of disordered personality, a system of 
mental possessions and facilities seemingly 
out of relation to those of the normal self, 
they have concluded that there must regular- 
ly be such psychic satellites in the orbit, the 
presence whereof is not created but only re- 
vealed by a favoring eccentricity. They point 
out the notable range of experience, difficult 
of explanation, which the supposition of such 
a psychic relation might illuminate; and ar- 
gue that any supposition that dispenses with 
such a psychic co-partner must in turn resort 
to devious assumptions to include within its 
explanatory scope the aforesaid divergent ex- 
periences. 

For the tendency of this "dualistic" hypo- 
thesis to make alliance with extreme and gra- 
tuitous assumptions, the scientific formula- 
tion thereof need not be held accountable.^ 

*The argument from alleged supernormal powers in 
freedom from or violation of accepted physical and 
mental limitations, the psychologist is hardly called 
upon to consider; though its actual prominence in the 
literature will excuse the comment that such use of 
the hypothesis but imposes an additional burden to be 
borne, and does not contribute to the logical force of 
the argument. To one firmly convinced of the truth 

43 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

The mass impression of the realm as of the 
detailed features, the entire trend of psycho- 
logical investigation and of so much of in- 
sight as illumines psychic procedure, seems to 
me overwhelmingly and consistently to bear 
against any such assumption, even when most 
objectively and logically .shaped. Here the 
ways divide. While investigation and ac- 
cumulation of data may proceed profitably 
without raising this issue, systematic interpre- 
tation cannot go far without revealing the 
formative trend of the underlying conception. 
To me the subconscious is psychologically sig- 
nificant and logically defensible only under 
some form of concept that clusters about the 
organic unity of the mind, and from such a 
base surveys in orderly sequence of relation, 
the divergent realm of minor and major ab- 
normalities. 

The explanation of subconscious proce- 
dure under this unitary conception is still be- 
set with hypothesis ; the sketch thereof made 
by any one artist inevitably reflects a favorite 
perspective, an allegiance of school and meth- 



of the "supernormal" data, the entire physical and 
mental world — quite as legitimately as the subcon- 
scious — may require an entire reconstruction. 

44 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

od. Fundamentally the range of subconscious 
function must find a place in the mental sys- 
tem by reason of fitness or use, reenforced 
and developed by evolutionary influences, ul- 
timately of a highly intricate nature. The 
degree as well as the manner of feeling- 
awareness^ that attaches to functions that 
may qualify for a place in the psychic system 
is conditioned by the value of such an accom- 
paniment or privilege in the functional effi- 
ciency. Fundamentally the subconscious status 
of certain functions is an expression of the 
mode of their representation in the physio- 
logical and psychological economy. It is a 
fact that influences in the shape of all sorts 
and conditions of stimuli, play upon the neu- 
ro-psychic equipment and modify its expres- 
sive behavior. If the reactions to such stim- 
uh demanded an equable distribution of feel- 
ing-awareness throughout their range, there 
would be no provision (or a very different 
one) for subconscious functioning. The dis- 
tribution of awareness as attaching to higher 
and lower, reflex and simply automatic and 

^At times a neutral term without the inevitable im- 
plications of "consciousness" is useful. For this I 
suggest feeling-awareness. 

45 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

automatically familiarized behavior, sets 
forth this relation; as, again, direct experi- 
mentation by an "impressionistic" response 
to aspects of stimuli equalized beyond explicit 
differentiation or recognition corroborates 
the result. 

The analysis of subconscious procedure ac- 
quires additional complexity through the in- 
herent many-sidedness of acquisition and ex- 
pression. Through the facilitation brought 
about by experience, a lesser degree of 
awareness, a suppressed variety of its pres- 
ence, accompanies — the sensitiveness to and 
the interpretation of outer stimuli as well as 
the voluntary aspect of the response (initia- 
tive). An equally important determinant is 
the distribution of the attentive attitude, in 
itself a fundamental factor of the psychic 
procedure. Peculiarly prominent in all is the 
will-like, consenting aspect of the Incorpora- 
tive process, by virtue of its Intimate affilia- 
tion with the personal flavor of conduct, as 
through the selection and direction and in- 
tegration of experience, a self emerges, ma- 
tures and expands. 

When the direction of interest in subcon- 
scious functioning is shaped towards an in- 

46 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

elusion of abnormal relations, there are oth- 
er obligations to be met. My exposition in- 
dicates my conviction that the conception thus 
emerging from the study of the normal legit- 
imately and fairly applies to the abnormal 
field. The most instructive variety of the 
domestic species revealing relatively pro- 
nounced or independent subconscious func- 
tioning, I find in the diversified lapses popu- 
larly termed absent-mindedness. Though 
evanescent and superficial, the disengagement 
of the normally accompanying "privileges" 
of complete consciousness presented in such 
cases, and again their amenability to analysis 
constitutes this domain a peculiarly instruc- 
tive example of what is meant by the subcon- 
scious in working trim. It is equally fortu- 
nate for the comprehension of the abnormal 
that so intrinsically abnormal a procedure as 
dreaming should be so common; and this 
both as furnishing a familiar alteration of 
mental state (physiologically conditioned), 
and as revealing the normality of the easy- 
going, revery-like, streams of mental occupa- 
tion that constantly and characteristically 
contribute to the psychic life. 

The variants of dream states, the drug in- 

47 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

toxications, trance and hypnosis present anal- 
ogies of release, impairment and rearrange- 
ment of function in further extension of 
dreaming and mental abstraction. Abnor- 
mality in these regions is a shifting matter 
and centers about the orientation of the sub- 
ject to his environment. Such orientation is 
variously interfered with by the invasions of 
projections from the inner world (analogous 
to those of trance, hypnosis, delirium, drug 
intoxication), or by the allied alternations 
and entanglements of rival syntheses of ex- 
perience (multiple personality and the like). 
Such dissociations frequently betray their ori- 
gin in subconsciously assimilated experience, 
and their growth by a like disenfranchised 
rumination, while differently instructive, are 
the more sudden curtailments of distortions 
of orientation in disintegrating lapses, not 
uncommonly of a "shock'' origin. Through- 
out this series the type characteristics far 
outweigh in importance the vagaries of de- 
tailed manifestations, while the analyses of 
retention to loss, of one conscious synthesis 
to its rival (notably in the hysterical anaes- 
thesias) are peculiarly significant in their rev- 
elation of the standard modus operandi of 

48 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

the abnormally subconscious, of the inter- 
course between dissociated groupings of func- 
tion. 

The fundamental difficulties surrounding 
this aspect of the conception are two: (i) 
the synthesizing of the products of such func- 
tioning into seceding systems (not merely 
sporadic states) ; (2) with or without such 
synthesis, the extreme elaboration of the 
products in specialized directions. Popularly 
this dual difficulty appears in the willingness 
to admit that absent-mindedness, dreaming, 
and simple suggestion are amply accounted 
for by a normally related conception^ of sub- 



*The most baffling group of subconcious facilities of 
a clearly normal type are the operations of arithmetical 
prodigies and related proficiencies. The determination 
of the status of these is a definite obligation which 
psychology has not yet met. There are beginnings and 
a few notable analyses; in the main, the results seemed 
to me so unsatisfactory that I was reluctantly com- 
pelled to all but omit them from my survey. I believe 
that in suitable cases the application of the methods 
used in cases of shifting personality, to the procedures 
in calculating prodigies, will reveal a more intimate 
insight into the subconscious facilitating steps, and that 
these will conform to the general conception here ad- 
vanced. The investigation seems at all events desirable 
and promising. 

49 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

consciousness, but that trance states (like 
those of Mile. Helene Smith) and conflicting 
personalities (like the case of Miss Beau- 
champ) remain enigmatic. Hence it is well 
that explanation should be addressed to the 
rational or imaginative elaboration, and to 
the "doubling" or rival, seceding, or de- 
tached synthesis. The inherent difficulty of 
each phase lies in its participation in the oth- 
er. The creative effort in Mile. Smith's Mar- 
tian extravaganza astonishes by its appear- 
ance as the work of a handicapped phase of 
her consciousness; the ingenious tantalizings 
of "Sally" are remarkable because directed 
against and concealed from another phase of 
her being. Yet once the dissociated-minded- 
ness be admitted, a further complexity of its 
application seems no serious obstacle to its 
admission; and particularly is it to be recog- 
nized that this pyschic synthesis can not only 
draw upon the reservoir of the common con- 
sciousness, but as well assimilate in like par- 
tial incorporation experiences of its own. 
The widening detachment (doubling) results 
accordingly from the capacity of the disso- 
ciated consciousness to shape its orientation 
(not alone its memory resources) by its own 
50 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

contracted model. I have attempted to show 
that the status thus resulting is of one type 
or another according (mainly) as the "fault" 
thus arising is genetic (Miss Beauchamp) or 
is disintegrating (Mr, Hanna), — the latter 
the more suggestive of definite physiological 
variation. In each the demonstrated though 
gradual and hard-won fusion points to the 
underlying unity despite temporary psycho- 
logical (or physiological) barrier, as do also 
the occasional spontaneous intercourse be- 
tween one realm and the other and the arti- 
ficially encouraged pour purlers upon a neu- 
tral ground. In fine, the added complication 
of these admittedly perplexing embodiments 
of dissociated functioning do not constitute a 
warrant for a distinctive hypothesis, but sug- 
gest a warranted extension of the conception 
of dissociation as applied to more common 
and regular phenomena. That the concep- 
tion of dissociation must be shaped to include 
these is obvious ; and the chief importance of 
further data lies in the hope that they may 
render more precise and explicit the connota- 
tion of that uniquely significant term in mod- 
ern psychology. 

While pleading for the regulative val- 

51 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ue of normal psychological conceptions 
for the study of abnormal psychology, 
I am as ready to derive from the lat- 
ter pertinent applications to the form- 
er, in theory and practice alike. The 
dictum that the grosser and more pronounced 
abnormalities are but common deficiencies 
writ large works both ways. The frequent 
existence of restraining and impeding influ- 
ences of a subconscious order in normal in- 
dividuals follows directly from the central 
position. The release of these by appropri- 
ate mental therapeutics is thus justified as 
practical procedure by reference to the analy- 
ses and again to the practical results in pro- 
nounced and wayward hysteria and in genetic 
and disintegrating lapses of personality. In 
such justification lies a legitimate phase of 
popular and professional interest in the con- 
ception of the subconscious. Here as else- 
where, wise practice will wait upon sound 
theory. 



52 



CHAPTER FOUR 

BY PIERRE JANET 
Professor of Psychology , College de France 

YOU have set me quite a difficult 
task and one which I hardly feel 
capable of accomplishing to 
your entire satisfaction. You 
ask me to take a stand with re- 
gard to the metaphysical theories which are 
developing today and which seem to have for 
their point of departure the study of phe- 
nomena formerly described by me under the 
name of the "Subconscious." These studies, 
already old, since I published them between 
the years 1886 and 1889, do not permit me 
to take part in this serious quarrel; they 
have a much more restricted and much less 
ambitious range. While the researches of 
the present day, whether they have a spirit- 
ualistic or a materialistic tendency, attain to 
the summit of the highest metaphysics, my 
old studies, very modest as they were, simply 
endeavored to throw light upon, describe and 
53 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

classify certain phenomena of pathological 
psychology. 

Disturbances of the notion of personality 
are freely met with in psychiatric studies. 
One finds not only disturbances in the con- 
ception which patients make of their own 
person, when they pretend to be a king or an 
animal, but also one very often meets with 
curious alterations In the assimilation, the in- 
corporation of such and such a phenomenon 
with that feeling they have of their own per- 
son. Indeed, It is undeniable that there takes 
place in us a certain classing of psychologic 
phenomena ; some are attached to the group 
of the phenomena of the outside world, oth- 
ers are grouped about the idea of our per- 
son. This idea, whether exact or not, which 
is probably In a great measure a product of 
our social education, becomes a center about 
which we range certain facts, while others are 
placed outside of ourselves. Without discuss- 
ing the value and the nature of this distribu- 
tion as It Is brought about In the practically 
normal mind, I state simply the fact that cer- 
tain patients attach badly to their personality 
certain phenomena, while others do not hesi- 
tate to consider the same facts as entirely per- 
54 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

sonal. 

In the delirium of typhoid fever one of 
my patients used to say to me : "J^st think of 
my poor husband who has such a frightful 
headache ; see how my children suffer in their 
stomachs, somebody is opening their abdo- 
men." She attributed to other people the 
sensations of suffering which ordinarily we 
do not hesitate to attribute to ourselves. One 
meets much more often still with a somewhat 
different illusion in that large class of pa- 
tients which I have described under the name 
of "psychasthenics;" many of them repeat 
incessantly such remarks as, "It is not I who 
feel, it is not I who eat, it is not I who speak, 
it is not I who suffer, it is not I who sleep; 
I am dead and it is not I who see clearly," 
etc.^ 

It is easy to determine that in these pa- 
tients their movements are correct, their di- 
verse sensations are correctly conserved, 
even their kinaesthetic and visceral sensa- 
tions; but the subject nevertheless declares 
that he does not attach them to his personal- 

*Nevroses et idees fixes, 1898, II, p. 62; Obsessions et 
psychasthenie, 1903, I, pp. 28 et 307, II, p. 40, 351. 

55 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ity; as far as he may he acts as if he did 
not have them at the disposition of his per- 
son. A patient of this sort, recently de- 
scribed by Seglas, declared that he had no 
memory and acted as far as possible as if he 
had really lost all memory, although it was 
easy to prove that he had in reality forgotten 
nothing.^ The apparent trouble of memory 
just as the apparent antecedent trouble of 
sensation and movement was nothing more 
than a disturbance in the development of the 
idea and the feeling of the personality. 

Among these psychasthenics the disturb- 
ance of the personality is not total. It is 
clearly manifest in certain mental operations 
which may aptly be called superior, — that is 
to say, in the judgment of recognition by 
which the attention attaches the new mental 
content to the old, in language with reflection 
and in voluntary action. But elementary op- 
erations of the personality seem to be pre- 
served; consciousness, that act by which a 
multiplicity and diversity of states is attached 
to a unity, seems to survive. The subject de- 
clares that it is not he who remembers this 

^Journal de psychologic normale et pathalogique, 
March, 1907, p. 97. 

56 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

or that act, that it is not he who sees this or 
that tree, but he remembers it nevertheless 
and continues to see it. At least it is manifest 
to us that his mind continues to see the tree, 
since he describes the changes which takes 
placfe in it and tells us : "The tree is green, its 
leaves flutter, but it is not I who see it." The 
disturbance of the personal perception ap- 
pears not to be profound. 

This incomplete character of the disturb- 
ances of the personality is found in all the ac- 
cidents of these psychasthenic patients; they 
have obsessions but are not completely insane 
and always recognize the absurdity of their 
obsessing ideas; they have impulses but do 
not carry them out; they have phobias con- 
cerning acts but never real inability to per- 
form acts, or real paralyses; they have inter- 
minable doubts but no true amnesias. It is 
the striking trait of their character that they 
never have any symptom in its completeness, 
and this incomplete character of the disturb- 
ances of their personality falls within a gen- 
eral law. 

Now there is another psychosis, all the 
symptoms of which might easily be put in a 
parallel column with those of psychasthenics, 
57 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

and that Is hysteria. This mental disease has 
for its essential characteristic exaggeration, 
the carrying to an extreme of all preceding 
symptoms. Instead of the preceding obses- 
sions with doubt, there are in the mono-deis- 
tic somnambulism of hysterics fixed ideas 
which develop to the most extreme degree, 
with complete hallucinations and impulses ; in 
place of doubt there is true amnesia ; in place 
of phobias we meet with complete paralyses. 
It is, therefore, interesting to see the form 
which the trouble of the personality, just de- 
scribed as incomplete in the previously men- 
tioned disease, will take in hysteria. 

Doubtless certain hysterics at times ex- 
press, with regard to certain sensations, judg- 
ments -analogous to those of psychasthenics. 

A patient formerly cited by Professor 
James used to say: "My arm is no longer a 
part of me, it is foreign to me, it is an old 
stump." This, however, is rather exception- 
al and most commonly one meets with a dif- 
ferent order of facts. In the wake of certain 
crises in which fixed ideas have developed 
superabundantly and completely in the form 
of feelings, acts and hallucinations, which we 
have called mono-ldelstic somnambulisms, 
58 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

the patient acts as if he were completely ig- 
norant of what has taken place ; he does not 
doubt his memories, he does not declare them 
foreign to his person; he does not speak of 
them at all, he ignores them. The same sub- 
ject has both legs paralyzed for certain per- 
iods of time, and yet he does not merely say 
that it is not he who walks, he does not walk 
at all. If one pricks or pinches his motion- 
less legs, he does not merely say that the sen- 
sation is foreign to him, that it no longer be- 
longs to him, that it is not he who feels; he 
says nothing at all, for he does not seem to 
feel it in any way. The loss which the per- 
sonality suffers, the alienation of the phenom- 
ena seems to be more complete than in the 
preceding case. Shall we say, however, that 
the cases are in nowise comparable? 

The psychasthenic still retained his mem- 
ories, his voluntary acts, his sensations. It 
is true that he said, "It is not I who remem- 
ber, I who move and feel," but he proved 
that he did feel by describing correctly ob- 
jects placed before him. 

In the hysteric these psychologic phenom- 
ena are merely suppressed, it is quite another 
disease, and that is exactly what I formerly 
59 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

tried to show, although In opposition to the 
opinion current at that time. With a little 
more precaution than is necessary with the 
psychasthenic but in the same way, by more 
carefully avoiding attracting of the patient to 
the expression of these phenomena, one may^ 
demonstrate perfectly their existence in as 
complete a form as in the so-called normal 
individual. Take the case of a young girl of 
twenty years who In her somnambulistic per- 
iods indulges In fugues of several days' dura- 
tion, far from the paternal roof. After her 
fugues she appears to have lost completely 
all memory of them, although she seems in- 
capable of telling you why she went away or 
where she went. Under distraction and while 
she was thinking of something else, I put a 
pencil in her right hand and she wrote me 
the following letter apparently without cog- 
nizance of what she was doing. — "I left 
home because mamma accuses me of having 
a lover and it is not true. I cannot live with 
her any longer. I sold my jewels to pay my 
railroad fare. I took such and such a train," 
etc. In this letter she relates her entire 
fugue with precision although she continues 
to contend that she remembers nothing about 
60 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

it. Another case, that of a man who seemed 
to have both legs paralyzed, rapidly tra- 
verses roofs during a somnambulism and 
even during the waking state makes with his 
limbs any movements one desires, if such 
movements are called for under favorable 
conditions. These people who seem not to 
see clearly or not to feel anything in their 
hands, describe to you in a subsequent som- 
nambulism or by means of the writing of 
which I have just spoken, or by still other 
methods, all the details of objects placed be- 
fore their eyes or brought in contact with 
their hands. Are we not obliged to conclude 
as in the preceding case, that sensations are 
really conserved, although the subject tells 
us that he does not feel them? These are in- 
teresting though perfectly commonplace clini- 
cal phenomena, since it is easy to see that all 
hysterical accidents are fashioned on the 
same model. They are analogous to the de- 
personalizations of psychasthenics, but they 
are not identical with them. I tried to sum 
them up under the word "subconscious," 
which, from my point of view, simply desig- 
nates this new form of the disease of the 
personality. 

6i 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

Since the time when I first began to employ 
the word "subconscious," in this purely clini- 
cal and somewhat prosaic sense, I must ad- 
mit that other authors have employed the 
same word in a sense infinitely more ambi- 
tious. The word has been used to designate 
marvelous activities which exist, so it ap- 
pears, within ourselves without our even sus- 
pecting their existence, and which become the 
source of our virtues, of our enthusiasms and 
of the divination of genius. This recalls that 
amusing saying of Hartmann: "Let us not 
despair at having a mind so practical and so 
lowly, so unpoetical and so little spiritual; 
there is within the innermost sanctuary of 
each of us, a marvelous something of which 
we are unconscious, which dreams and prays 
while we labor to earn our daily bread." 1 
intentionally avoid discussing theories so con- 
soling and perhaps true withal; I simply re- 
mind myself that I have something quite dif- 
ferent to do. The poor patients whom I 
studied had no genius ; the phenomena which 
had become subconscious with them were 
very simple phenomena, such as among other 
men are a part of their personal conscious- 
ness and excite no wonder. They had lost 
62 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

the power to will and the knowledge of self 
they had a disease of the personality, nothing 
more. 

In connection with these same facts and in 
making use of the same word, their theories 
have touched the great problem of the con- 
nections between soul and body, between 
thought and brain. Are cerebral phenomena 
always accompanied by psychologic phenom- 
ena? When psychologic phenomena dimin- 
ish, when they are reduced to their simplest 
expression do they not tend to disappear, and 
may not one then say that nervous phenom- 
ena subsist alone? May not certain coordi- 
nate movements which are but ill perceived 
by patients during their convulsions, and In 
choreas, be attributed to simple cerebral 
phenomena without interjecting the notion of 
psychologic phenomena? If we were really 
determined to baptize these physiologic phe- 
nomena without thought of the name subcon- 
scious, might we not on account of the anal- 
ogy of the name say that all the phenomena 
of somnambulism or of automatic writing is 
easily explainable "by phosphorescent shad- 
ows which flit across certain centers of the 
cerebral cortex" I 

63 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

Far be it from me to discuss these fine 
theories which seduce certain minds by their 
scientific appearance, and which after all do 
probably contain some truth. I am content 
to remark, that that is quite another problem 
Doubtless the question of the connections be- 
tween thought and brain may be discussed 
with regard to somnambulism as well as with 
regard to nearly every fact of normal life, 
but in my opinion there is no good reason 
why this great problem should be particu- 
larly raised in this connection. The assimi- 
lation of the conduct of the somnambulist, of 
the execution of the suggestion, of a page of 
automatic writing, with incoordinate convul- 
sive movements is pure childishness. These 
diverse acts are identical with those which 
we are accustomed to observe in persons like 
ourselves and to explain by the intervention 
of the intelligence. Undoubtedly one may 
say that a somnambulist is only a mechanical 
doll, but then we must say the same of every 
creature. These are useless reveries. In our 
ignorance, we simply know that certain com- 
plex facts, like an intelligent reply to a ques- 
tion, depend upon two things which we be- 
lieve associated; superior cerebral mechan- 

64 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ism and a phenomenon which we call an effect 
of consciousness. We find the same charac- 
teristics in the so-called subconscious phe- 
nomena, and we must suppose back of them 
the same two conditions. To be able to af- 
firm, anything else we should need to possess 
precise knowledge concerning the expression 
of superior or inferior phenomena of cere- 
bral activity, concerning the loss of the asso- 
ciation of consciousness with cerebral phe- 
nomena, knowledge which we positively do 
not possess. Certainly it ought not to be 
with regard to half understood symptoms of 
a mental disease that we should try to resolve 
these great problems of metaphysics. In my 
opinion, we have got other psychologic and 
clinical problems to resolve concerning the 
subconscious without embarrassing ourselves 
with these speculations. You see that I am 
today more occupied than formerly with the 
relations which exist between the depersonal- 
ization of psychasthenics and the subcon- 
sciouness of hysterics. We must study the 
intermediate types which are met with much 
oftener than I had thought. It is necessary 
to determine if certain characteristics of the 
one disease are not found in the other. Does 

65 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

not the hysteric herself possess a sort of in- 
sane belief which makes her relinquish cer- 
tain phenomena? Up to what point is she 
sincere in her declarations of ignorance? 
Does she not to a certain extent deceive her- 
self? By what steps does she arrive at the 
complete separation of phenomena which 
seem to exist in certain cases? Do the psy- 
chologic phenomena thus dissociated always 
retain their properties, are they not more or 
less transformed? The same problem pre- 
sents itself in connection with the muscular 
phenomena, for in the hysterical contracture 
it does not seem to me exact to say that the 
muscular contraction remains absolutely what 
it was in normal movements. There are 
many other clinical problems of great import- 
ance which it seems to me must be studied 
None of these researches can be made with- 
out exact and long continued observations 
carried on under good conditions, and the 
very least of them is to my mind more im- 
portant than all the huge tomes full of spec- 
ulations put together. It seems to me not 
difficult to gather from these few reflections 
the reply to your questions, or, at least, to 
66 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

certain of them.^ 

[i. What do you understand by the "Sub- 
conscious?"] 

The word "subconscious" is the name giv- 
en to the particular form which disease of the 
personahty takes in hysteria. 

[2. Does "doubhng" (Janet) of con- 
sciousness ever occur whether normally or 
pathologically? If not, how would you ex- 
plain the various so-called subconscious phe- 
nomena of abnormal psychology (automatic 
writing, speech, etc.)]? 

This word is not a philosophical explana- 
tion; it is a simple cHnical observation of a 
common character which these phenomena 
present. 

[3. Does the subconscious always repre- 
sent or depend upon the doubling of con- 
sciousness? If so, must there be a lack of 
awareness on the part of the personal con- 

^A series of ten questions were sent to each con- 
tributor to this symposium, suggesting points on which 
it was thought desirable to obtain expressions of views 
and to keep the discussion within certain limits. Pro- 
fessor Janet concludes with answers to eight of these 
questions. I have interpolated each question in brackets 
in his article before the answer in order that the latter 
may be understood. — Editor. 

67 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

sciousness for the second dissociated group 
of ideas?] 

There exist all sorts of intermediate path- 
ologic forms between the doubt of the psy- 
chasthenic and the subconsciousness of the 
hysteric. 

[4. Is there normally in every individual 
a second group of co-acting ideas of which 
the individual is not aware (a so-called sec- 
ondary consciousness) ? If so, are such ideas 
discreet or systematized?] 

It is possible, for all pathologic phenom- 
ena have their germ in normal physiology. 

[5. If doubling occurs, is it always patho- 
logical ? If so, how do you explain automatic 
writing, post-hypnotic phenomena, like un- 
conscious solutions of arithmetical problems 
and similar phenomena in normal people?] 

Clear-cut phenomena truly comparable to 
the subconsciousness of hysterics are infinite- 
ly rare in the normal mind. When they are 
really noted by competent observers they 
must be regarded as unhealthy accidents of a 
more or less transient character, and in gen- 
eral, as I have always observed, of a some- 
what sinister omen. 

Furthermore, these discussions of the 
68 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

words, health and disease are absolutely puer- 
ile and recall the sophism of the Greeks about 
the bald-headed man. A phenomenon is mor- 
bid when it is most often associated with oth- 
er symptoms of a well recognized disease 
and when it disappears with the disease. Such 
indeed is the characteristic feature of som- 
nambulism and of automatic writing, which 
can no longer be evoked in hysterics when 
they recover from their disease. 

[6. Do you include under the term sub- 
conscious all conscious experiences that have 
been forgotten, and which are capable of be- 
ing synthesized with the personal conscious- 
ness at any given moment regardless of 
whether the forgotten experiences are co-act- 
ing or not (Sidis) ? (In this case subcon- 
sciousness becomes co-extensive with the for- 
gotten and out of mind.) ] 

It seems to me difficult to reply to this 
question when we know so little concerning 
the form in which our memories are pre- 
served when they are not called forth. 

[7. Do you limit the term solely to the 
conscious states which are in co-activity at 
any given moment, but of which the subject 
is not aware?] 

69 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

The word ''subconscious" seems to me 
rather to apply to this more clearly cut case. 

[8. Do you base the conception of the 
subconscious on the fact of awareness on the 
part of the individual for certain conscious 
states, so that there would be different de- 
grees of subconsciousness corresponding to 
different degrees of awareness? For exam- 
ple, as in absent-mindedness and as repre- 
sented by the theory of the "fringe of the fo- 
cus of consciousness."] 

There are evidently relations between all 
these phenomena, but we must avoid con- 
founding them with one another; analysis 
compels us to establish some discontinuity be- 
tween the facts. 

So here, my dear Dr. Prince, you have the 
answers requested. I fear that they will 
hardly satisfy your readers. An investiga- 
tion of this sort does not resolve the prob- 
lems once and for all; it merely brings the 
different opinions into competition as they 
were before. I hope that it may interest at 
least some few and lead them to psychologi- 
cal observations which will be of lasting util- 
ity to science. 



70 



CHAPTER FIVE 

BY MORTON PRINCE 

Professor of Neurology, Tufts College Med- 
ical School 

IN the prefatory note to this symposium 
six different meanings in which the 
term "subconscious" is nowadays used 
were defined. All but the first and 
fourth of these meanings involve dif- 
ferent interpretations of the same observed 
facts. In a symposium of this kind three of 
these only need to be considered; namely, 
those which Professor Miinsterberg has so 
clearly distinguished and explained, as the 
points of view of the layman, the physician 
and the theoretical psychologist. /As the 
first of these three hangs upon the validity of 
the second, we need only take up for discus- 
sion the two last. These two offer interpre- 
tations of facts which are not in dispute. Let 
me state over again the problem : 

According to the first of these two inter- 
pretations (Professor Miinsterb erg's and my 
71 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

second type) , so-called automatic writing and 
speech, post-hypnotic phenomena like the so- 
lution of arithmetical problems and various 
abnormal phenomena, of the origin of all 
which the subject is Ignorant, are the mani- 
festations of dissociated ideas of which the 
subject is unaware and which are therefore 
called subconscious. Thus a "doubling" of 
consciousness results consisting of the per- 
sonal self and the subconscious ideas. I pre- 
fer myself the term co-conscious to subcon- 
scious, partly to express the notion of co-ac- 
tivity of a second co-consciousness, partly to 
avoid the ambiguity of the conventional term 
due to its many meanings, and partly because 
such ideas are not necessarily 5«Z?-conscious 
at all; that is, there may be no lack of aware- 
ness of them. The co-conscious ideas may 
be very elementary and consist only of sensa- 
tions and perceptions which have been split 
off from the personal consciousness, as in 
hysterical anesthesiae, or they may consist of 
recurring memories of past experiences. Un- 
der certain conditions by a process of synthe- 
sizing these Ideas and assimilation of them 
with a greater or less amount of the personal 
self, which is thereby attenuated, in its facul- 
72 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ties, quite large dissociated systems of sub- 
conscious ideas may be formed and give rise 
to the complicated phenomena for which an 
interpretation is desired. 

According to the opposing hypothesis, all 
these phenomena are explainable as the man- 
ifestations of pure physiological processes un- 
accompanied by ideas. The apparently intel- 
lectual and purposive acts as well as volition 
and memory are performed by brain pro- 
cesses alone to which no consciousness be- 
longs. Such acts differ only in complexity 
from such other physiological processes 
which carry on the digestion and other func- 
tions of the body, on the one hand, and the 
spasmodic jerkings and twitchings, seen in 
chorea, epilepsy and other abnormal affec- 
tions, on the other. "Unconscious cerebra- 
tion, Carpenter called it years ago. Which 
of these two interpretations is correct? Pro- 
fessor Miinsterberg is absolutely right in 
saying *'no fact of abnormal experience can 
by itself prove that a psychological and not a 
physiological explanation is needed; it is a 
philosophical problem which must be settled 
by principle before the explanation of the 
special facts begins." The principle is the 
73 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

existence of dissociated subconscious ideas. 
Are there such things ? 

With the meaning of this problem well be- 
fore the mind it becomes manifest that be- 
fore the fundamental principle of dissociated 
ideas is definitely established, it is the sheer- 
est waste of time to discuss larger problems, 
such as the extent of the subconscious symp- 
toms, whether they belong to the normal as 
well as the abnormal mind, whether they 
form a "self," a secondary self (third mean- 
ing), etc. These and others are important 
but secondary problems. Above all is it a 
wasteful expenditure of intellectual energy to 
indulge in metaphysical speculations regard- 
ing the existence and functions of a mystical 
subliminal self (Myers), transcending as it 
does all experience and everything that even 
a "subconscious self" can experience. The 
point then which we have to determine at the 
very beginning of the inquiry is this : Do ideas 
ever occur outside the synthesis of the per- 
sonal self-consciousness under any conditions, 
whether of normal or abnormal life, so that 
the subject becomes unaware of these? Or, 
putting the question in the form in which it 
is prescribed to the experimenter: Do phe- 
74 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

nomena which appear to be the manifesta- 
tions of a subconscious intelligence necessi- 
tate the postulation of dissociated ideas, or 
are these phenomena compatible with the in- 
terpretation that they are due to pure physio- 
logical processes without psychical corre- 
lates? 



75 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 



The only grounds which I have for believ- 
ing that my fellow beings have thoughts like 
myself are that their actions are like my own 
exhibit intelligence like my own, and when I 
ask them they tell me they have conscious- 
ness, which as described is like my own. Now, 
when I observe the so-called automatic ac- 
tions, I find that they are of a similar charac- 
ter, and when I ask of whatever it is that 
performs these actions. Whether it is con- 
scious or not? the written or spoken reply is, 
that it is and that consciously it feels, thinks 
and wills the actions, etc. The evidence be- 
ing the same in the one case as in the other, 
the presumption is that the automatic intelli- 
gence is as conscious as the personal intelli- 
gence. The alternative interpretation is, not 
that a physiological process is lying, because 
lying connotes ideas, but that in some way it 
is able to rearrange itself and react to anoth- 
er person's ideas expressed through spoken 
language exactly in the same way that a con- 
scious intelligence lies I 



76 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 



The phenomena which occur in the neatest 
and most precise form and which, from the 
fact that they can be induced, modified and 
examined at will, are best adapted for experi- 
mental study, are so called automatic writing 
and speech. We will therefore take these 
for examination and see if they ever require 
the interpretation of a secondary intelligence 
of a psychical nature. 

When automatic writing is produced in 
its mostly highly developed form, the subject 
with absolutely unclouded mind, with all his 
senses about him is able to orient, think and 
reason as if nothing unusual is occurring. He 
may watch with unconcerned curiosity the va- 
garies of the writing pencil. In other words, 
he is in possession of his normal waking intel- 
ligence. Meanwhile his hand automatically 
produces perhaps long discourses of diverse 
content. But he is entirely unaware of what 
his hand is writing and his first knowledge of 
its content comes after reading the manu- 
script. We then have intelligence No. i and 
writing manifestations which may or may not 
be interpreted as having been produced by a 
77 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

conscious intelligence No. 2. But writing of 
this sort is not always produced with intelli- 
gence No. I as alert as this. 

On the contrary, often and perhaps most 
frequently the writer falls into a drowsy con- 
dition in which he imperfectly orients his 
surroundings, and if he is reading aloud ac- 
cording to the common method of conducting 
the experiment, he is only dimly conscious of 
what he is reading. This extinguishing of 
consciousness in intelligence No. i may go 
further and he may not hear when spoken to 
or feel when touched. He reads on mechan- 
ically and without consciousness of the mat- 
ter he is reading. In other words, he has be- 
come deaf and tactually anesthetic and blind 
to everything but the printed characters on 
the page before him, and for even these 
mind-blind. In this state then there is prac- 
tically extinguishment of all sense perceptions 
and intellectual thought, and finally the im- 
pairment of consciousness may be carried so 
far that he actually goes to sleep. Ask intel- 
ligence No. 2 what has become of No. i, and 
the answer may be, "He has gone to sleep."^ 

^This answer was given by a subject observed while 
this paper was being prepared. 

78 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

In other words, intelligence No. i has 
disappeared, but intelligence No. 2 contin- 
ues. 

Now to interpret the automatic writing 
produced when this great impairment of in- 
telligence No. I has taken place as subcon- 
scious phenomena and due to subconscious in- 
telligence whether physiological or psycho- 
logical is to overlook the facts as presented. 
These are not phenomena of a subconscious 
intelligence but of an alternating intelligence 
or personality. The complete suppression of 
intelligence No. i has left but one intelli- 
gence, that which had been under other con- 
ditions intelligence No. 2. Unless the phy- 
siological interpretation be maintained the 
writing has ceased to be automatic in the 
sense in which the term was originally used 
and has become what, for the time being, is 
the primary intelligence although a different 
one from that which was originally awake. 
I say different because if we examine the con- 
tent of the writing we may find it is made up 
of memories of past experiences which were 
entirely forgotten by the original intelligence 
No. I and gives evidence of a personahty dif- 
fering in character, volitions, sentiment, 

79 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

moods and points of view, of a character dif- 
fering in a large degree from that of the 
waking intelligence. The writing may be an 
original composition involving thought and 
reason comparable to that exhibited by a nor- 
mal mind. Such compositions are of great 
interest from the light they throw upon the 
origin and development of secondary per- 
sonalities, but with that we have nothing to 
do here. At present the only interest we 
have in such compositions is the evidence 
which they offer for the interpretation of 
such a personality. That is to say, whether 
its intelligence is the exhibition of physiolog- 
ical or psychological processes. To arrive at 
a satisfactory interpretation, we must study 
the behavior of the personality to its environ- 
ment. If we speak to it, it answers intelli- 
gently in writing, though intelligence No. i 
fails to respond. If we prick the hand, we 
obtain a similar response and lack of re- 
sponse from intelligence No. 2 and No. i re- 
spectively, and the same with the other 
senses. It exhibits spontaneity of thought and 
its faculties are curtailed in the motor sphere 
alone in which it retains power only to 
80 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

move the muscles of the arm and hand;^ 
but even here in the motor sphere its facul- 
ties are not necessarily so limited for it may 
break out into speech and may exhibit various 
sporadic movements. It has lost only a gen- 
eral coordinating control over the whole 
body. In the motor sphere, therefore, its 
loss is not so great as that which has befallen 
intelligence No. i. In fact, we have here a 
condition very similar to that of some per- 
sons in deep hypnosis. The main point is that 
now we have to do with an alternating intelli- 
gence, not a co-intelligence. Is it an alternat- 
ing conscioiisnessf 

The next thing to note is that in passing 
from automatic writing, which is performed 
while intelligence No. i is completely alert, 
to writing which is performed while this in- 
telligence is completely or nearly extin- 
guished, we pass through insensible grada- 
tions from one condition to the other and 
we must infer that the intelligence must he 

^By this is not meant that it has the same degree of 
knowledge and capacity for intellectual thought pos- 
sessed by the original personahty, No. i, but only that 
it has all the different kinds of intelligence possessed 
by a normal person. 

8i 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

the same in kind, physiological or psychologi- 
cal, which produced the writing in the one case 
as in the other. If the alternating intelli- 
gence in the latter case is psychological, the 
subconscious intelligence in the former must 
be the same, for there is no place where we 
can stop and conclude — here the physiologi- 
cal ends and the psychological begins. 

In the alternating intelligence producing 
automatic writing we have an alternating per- 
sonality. We have here substantially the 
same condition that is observed, first, in some 
hpynotic states; second, trance states; third, 
^'fugues," spontaneous somnambulism and 
post-epileptic states; fourth a state not very 
different from normal sleep with dreams, for- 
gotten on waking; and fifth, certain states of 
deep abstraction. In none of these has there 
ever been raised the doubt as to the con- 
scious character of the intelHgence. All are 
"alternating" states and some are alternating 
personalities. In the first group, suggestions 
requiring conscious intelligence are compre- 
hended, remembered and acted upon; in the 
second, writing and speech are manifested 
which can only be interpreted as the product 
of thought; in the third and fourth, the 
82 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

thoughts and dreams can afterwards be re- 
gained by certain technical devices ; and in the 
last the conscious processes are remembered. 



83 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 



Let us go further with our experiment and 
take a case exhibiting automatic writing 
where intelHgence No. i remains unimpaired. 
We hypnotize such a subject. When asked 
what sort of intelligence it was that did the 
writing, he replies that he remembers perfect- 
ly the thoughts, sensations and the feelings 
which made up the consciousness of which in- 
telligence No. I was not aware and that this 
consciousness did the writing. Still, it may be 
maintained that this in itself is not proof 
but that the hypothesis is permissible, that 
these memories are sort of hallucinations, 
and that in hypnosis what were previously 
physiological processes now have become re- 
awakened and have given rise in the hypnotic 
synthesis to psychical memories. We shall 
then have to go further and seek for addi- 
tional evidence. 



84 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 



Automatic writers may be divided into two 
classes; namely, those who at the moment of 
writing are entirely unaware of what the 
hand is writing; and those in whom at the 
moment of writing ideas corresponding to 
written words surge apparently from no- 
where without logical associative relation in- 
to the mind. Mrs. H., for example, is an ex- 
cellent automatic writer of the second class. 
At the moment when the pencil writes ideas 
which it is about to express arise at once in 
her consciousness so that she is herself in 
doubt as to whether she writes the sentence 
volitionally, or whether it is written auto- 
matically entirely independent of her will. 
Sometimes while writing, the ideas come so 
rapidly that unable to express them with suf- 
ficient celerity with the pencil she bursts out 
into voluble speech. To test her doubt, she 
is given a pencil and told not to write. Then 
she finds herself without control of her hand, 
and, in fact, the pencil writes the more flu- 
ently the greater the effort she makes to in- 
hibit it. In the midst of a suitable sentence I 
hold her hand and restrain the writing, and 

85 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ask her to complete the sentence by word of 
mouth, which of course she could do if it was 
her own intelligence, that is No. i, that was 
doing the writing; but she cannot complete 
the idea, showing that she does not really 
know what the hand was about to write. 

Again, Mrs. B. in hypnosis is told to write 
automatically when awake, "three times six 
are eighteen; four times five are twenty.^' 
After being awakened she is given something 
to read aloud; while reading the hand begins 
to write as previously directed, but she stops 
reading saying, that she cannot because the, 
to her, absurd sums three times six are eigh- 
teen, four times five are twenty, keep coming 
into her head. She cannot understand why 
she should think of such things. 

Now, are we to conclude that the mechan- 
ism of automatic writing in the second class 
of writers differs from that performed by 
the first class, and that when the writer is 
aware of the automatic thoughts the writing 
is done by psychical processes, and that when 
he is not aware of any automatic thoughts it 
is done by physiological processes? In every 
other respect, in content of writing and in 
behavior of the automatic personality to the 
86 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

environment, we find the phenomena are the 
same. It does not seem to me that such an 
interpretation is justifiable. As I view this 
question of the subconscious, far too much 
weight is given to the point of awareness or 
not awareness of our conscious processes. As 
a matter of fact we find entirely identical 
phenomena, that is identical in every respect 
but one — that of awareness — in which some- 
times we are aware of these conscious phe- 
nomena and sometimes not; but the one es- 
sential and fundamental quality in them is 
automaticity or independence of the personal 
consciousness. Doubling and independence 
of the personal consciousness are therefore 
the test of the subconscious rather than ware- 
ness. 



87 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 



In the content of automatic writing we find 
evidence which It Is difficult to reconcile with 
a physiological interpretation. This was 
briefly touched upon before. When studied 
we find that the writing does not consist of 
words, phrases and paragraphs which might 
be mere repetitions or memories whether phy- 
siological or psychical, of previous experi- 
ences, but even consist of elaborate original 
compositions. Sometimes In Mrs. Verrall's 
writing they consisted of original Latin or 
Greek compositions.^ Sometimes, as in those 
who are Inclined to a spiritistic interpreta- 
tion, of fanciful fairy-tale-like fabrications. 
Sometimes they exhibit mathematical reason- 
ing shown by the solution of arithmetical 
problems. Sometimes they consist of in- 
geniously fabricated explanations In answer 
to questions. Sometimes they Indicate a per- 
sonal character with varying moods and tem- 
peraments. Feeling and emotion whether of 
anger, hatred or malice, kindness or amia- 
bility are often manifested. If such a docu- 

*Proc. S. P. R, Vol. XX, p't liii, 1906, 

88 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ment were presented as testamentary evi- 
dence In the ordinary course of human affairs, 
it would seem as if the burden of proof 
would lie with him who would insist upon in- 
terpreting it as without psychological mean- 
ing and as only the expression of a physiolog- 
ical activity of the nervous system without 
thought. 



8$ 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 
6 

Suggestions In hypnosis may result in post- 
hypnotic phenomena, which are manifesta- 
tions of an Intelligence which may be of a 
kind which cannot possibly be explained by 
physiological habits, as it exhibits logical re- 
adjustment of ideas of a high order; for in- 
stance, complex arithmetical calculations. 
The subject is only aware of the final result, 
being entirely ignorant of the process by 
which it was arrived at. Later this process 
can be recalled in hypnosis as conscious mem- 
ories. To assume that such a calculation can 
be performed by a brain process not accom- 
panied by thought would seem to require the 
abandonment of the doctrine of the correla- 
tion of mind and brain. In some instances, 
as with automatic writing, the subject be- 
comes aware of the automatic conscious pro- 
cess though ignorant of its origin. Are we to 
assume here again that the processes giving 
rise to the same manifestations, under the 
same conditions, differ in kind according as 
whether a subject is aware of them or not — 
in the former case being psychical, in the lat- 
ter physiological ? 

90 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 



The great variety of phenomena occurring 
in abnormal conditions are often explained by 
the patient in hypnosis as the manifestations 
of ideas (perceptions, hallucinations, memo- 
ries, emotions, etc.), which are remembered 
as such, though unknown to the personal con- 
sciousness. [This evidence does not differ 
in kind from that derived from automatic 
writing (3).] 



91 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 
8 

After all, as I conceive the matter, the one 
great difficulty In the minds of those who are 
unable to accept the psychological Interpreta- 
tion of subconscious phenomena lies In under- 
standing how we can have states of conscious- 
ness of which we are unaware. Conscious- 
ness Is represented as a functioning unity, and 
It Is difficult to accept the notion that all 
states of consciousness are not so synthesized 
as to form part of that great system which 
we dub self-conscious. Thus, consciousness is 
confused with ^^//-consciousness. This has 
come about because the onlyimmedlate exper- 
ience which anyone has of conscious states Is 
with that which belongs to his self, which 
is only another way of saying with that of 
which he is aware. All conscious states, so 
far as we experience them, belong to, take 
part In, or help make up a self, — in fact, the 
expression, "We experience" Implies a self 
that experiences. It Is difficult, therefore, to 
conceive of a conscious state that is not a part 
of a self-conscious self. It seems queer then, 
to think of a state of consciousness, a sensa- 
tion, a perception, an idea floating off — so to 
92 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

speak— by Its lonesome self and not attached 
to anything that can be called a self. It is 
difficult to conceive of anything worthy of be- 
ing called a sensation or perception, excepting 
so far as there is a self to experience it; and 
yet it really is a naive conception to imagine 
that we are self-conscious of each and every 
conscious state that Is aroused In correlation 
with out nervous system. Such a conception 
is very much akin to the naive notion of scien- 
tific materiahsm which assumes, for the prac- 
tical purposes of experimentation or other 
reasons, that phenomenal matter really exists 
as such. Consciousness whether in an ele- 
mentary or complex form must be correlated 
with an Innumerable number of different phy- 
siological brain syntheses. If this is not so 
the whole structure of the psycho-physiology 
of the mind and brain falls. We have every 
reason to assume that some sort of a psychi- 
cal state occurs when any one of these asso- 
ciation-groups is excited to activity. (At any 
given moment the great mass of them is in- 
hibited.) There is strong reason to believe 
that though ordinarily there is a harmony In 
the functioning of these association-groups, 
yet at times there is considerable disharmony 

93 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

and there is clinical evidence for believing 
that there may be some independence of ac- 
tivity, especially under pathological condi- 
tions (hallucinations, obsessions, etc.), of 
different brain syntheses. 

Without being obliged to determine what 
brain synthesis belongs to the personal con- 
sciousness at any given moment, we are enti- 
tled to ask why must we necessarily be aware 
of all the conscious states which may belong 
to each and every brain association-group ? Is 
this not a naive assumption? If it is true that 
dissociated brain systems can functionate (as 
in other parts of the nervous system), and 
if it is true that they have psychical equiva- 
lents, then whether we are self-conscious of 
any given state of consciousness must depend, 
it would seem, upon whether the brain pro- 
cess, correlated with it, is synthesized in a 
particular way with the larger system of 
brain processes which is correlated at a given 
moment with the self-conscious personality. 
And in so far as a brain process can occur de- 
tached from the main system of brain pro- 
cesses, so far can consciousness occur without 
self-consciousness. Unfortunately, we have 
scarcely a glimmer of knowledge of the na- 
94 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ture of the synthesis, and therefore of the 
conditions which determine whether we shall 
be aware of any conscious state or not. This 
is a problem in psychology which awaits the 
future. Nor is self-consciousness a neces- 
sary element of consciousness. The naive 
character of the notion that we must be self- 
conscious of our consciousness is shown by 
introspective analysis in intense mental con- 
centration or absent-mindedness. Here is no 
awareness of self, only a succession of ideas 
which adjust and readjust themselves. It is 
not until afterwards, on "returning to one's 
self," that these ideas through memory be- 
come a part of our self-conscious personality. 
It will be noticed that an essential element 
in the conception of the subconscious, as gen- 
erally held by students of abnormal phenom- 
ena, is the absence of awareness of the per- 
sonal consciousness for the dissociated ideas. 
A consideration of the facts in their entirety 
do not permit of so limited a view to which I 
am compelled to dissent. Theoretically, a 
conception so narrow prevents our obtaining 
a broad view of allied psychological phe- 
nomena, obscures our perception of the 
broad principles underlying them and hinders 
95 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

a correlation of closely related conditions. 
Dissociation, with activity, independent of 
the main focus of consciousness, does not 
necessarily imply or require absence of 
awareness on the part of the latter, and prac- 
tically, as we have seen in discussing the phe- 
nomena of automatic writing, under the same 
conditions, a subject is sometimes aware of 
the dissociated ideas which are actively mani- 
festing themselves and sometimes not. The 
same is true of post-hypnotic and abnormal 
phenomena. Indeed, even when there is ab- 
sence of awareness on the part of the person- 
al consciousness, the dissociated co-conscious- 
ness may, per contra, be aware of the content 
of the former. For this reason, if for no 
other, co-consciousness is the preferable term. 
The one fundamental principle and criterion 
of the subconscious is dissociation and co-ac- 
tivity (automatism). When we get rid of 
this notion of awareness as an essential ele- 
ment, we are able to grasp the relation be- 
tween the subconsciousness of hysterics and 
the disaggregation of personality of the psy- 
chasthenic, a study with which Dr. Janet says 
he is now occupied. The obsessions, the im- 
pulsions, the fears, in short, the imperative 

96 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ideas of the psychasthenic are as much dis- 
aggregated from the personal consciousness 
as the same are in the hysteric, excepting for 
that amount of synthesis that gives aware- 
ness. Indeed, the hysteric may have a cer- 
tain amount of awareness, or awareness for 
some and not for other ideas. The only dif- 
ference then between an ordinary obsession 
and a "subconscious" obsession as commonly 
viewed, is that the subject is aware of the 
one and not of the other. Undoubtedly the 
condition of awareness alters considerably 
the resulting psychical content, as it brings in- 
to play various co-operative and modifying 
and in some measure adjusting ideas. This 
is not the place to enter into a consideration 
of the differences and likenesses between psy- 
chasthenia and hysteria, but I believe it im- 
portant to insist that lack of awareness is not 
an essential factor in the development of the 
subconscious, and furthermore that an ap- 
preciation of this fact will enable us to better 
correlate the different varieties of co-con- 
scious activities not only in various diseased 
conditions but with facts of normal mental 
hfe. 



97 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 



Those who maintain the physiological in- 
terpretation seem to me to involve thmselves 
in difficulties far greater than any offered by 
the psychological interpretation. It is a 
fundamental interpretation of psycho-physi- 
ology that all thought is correlated with phy- 
siological activities. Whatever doctrine we 
adopt, whether that of parallelism or psycho- 
physical identification, every psychical pro- 
cess is correlated with a physiological pro- 
cess and vice versa. We cannot conceive of 
a psychical activity without a corresponding 
physiological one. How then can we con- 
ceive of a physiological process of a complex- 
ity and character capable of exhibiting itself 
as a spontaneous volitional intelligence with- 
out corresponding correlated ideas? Surely 
this needs explanation quite as much as does 
a lack of awareness of conscious processes. 
Yet with a certain modification of our con- 
ception of the meaning of the physical, it is 
possible to reconcile both interpretations. As 
a panpsychist I find no difficulty in accepting 
both a physiological and a psychical interpre- 
tation. For those who accept panpsychism 

98 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

there is no distinction to be made between 
conscious processes and brain processes of a 
certain order, excepting as a point of view. 
They become identified one with the other. 
The psychical Is the reality of the physical. I 
cannot conceive of brain processes except as 
objective phenomena of conscious processes, 
and I cannot conceive of consciousness ex- 
cepting as the reality or ''Inner life" of brain 
changes. So that we may Indifferently de- 
scribe automatic actions as manifestations of 
physiological activities, if we keep to one set 
of terms, or of psychical activities If we mix 
the terms. But in doing this let us not strad- 
dle and deceive ourselves as to our real posi- 
tion. In thinking In physiological terms we 
must not confuse ourselves and, by adopting 
a terminology, imagine that those physical 
brain factors are without psychical equiva- 
lents. To hold to a pure physiological expla- 
nation without the notion of anything psychi- 
cal as a part of their real nature. Is to postu- 
late consciousness as a pure epi-phenomenon, 
something that we can shift in and out at our 
pleasure, when we have brain action, and jug- 
gle with as a conjurer juggles with his coins, 
— now you see them and now you don't. 
99 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

It may be that the final explanation of 
many conscious processes, if we would avoid 
the entanglements of metaphysics, must be 
in physiological terms, because it must deal 
with that which belongs to experience. We 
can experience physiological "after effects,'^ 
and by a simple inference go back to the phy- 
siological functioning forerunner, and thus 
perhaps explain memory, but, as Professor 
Miinsterberg so well points out, it is difficult 
to see how a comprehensible explanation of 
memory can be found in "mental disposi- 
tions," and on grounds, as I would state them, 
that such dispositions being out of conscious- 
ness we have no experience of them and can 
have no conception of what they are. They 
become nothing more than meta-physical con- 
cepts. For myself I cannot even think of a 
"mental disposition," meaning, for instance, 
a name or mental picture that is not at the 
moment a state of consciousness, whether 
subconscious or belonging to my self-con- 
scious synthesis. However this may be, I 
not only say with Professor Miinsterberg 
that "the physiological cerebration is well 
able to produce the 'intellectual' result," but 
it must be able to do so. The only question 

100 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

is whether it is accompanied by, belongs to, 
or is another aspect of ideas. This can, to 
my way of thinking, only be settled by logical 
inferences from the observed phenomena, 
and I. have endeavored in what has gone be- 
fore to marshal the evidence so far as it ex- 
ists today in substantiation of this interpre- 
tation. 



lOI 



CHAPTER SIX 
The Conception of the Suh conscious 

BY BERNARD HART, M. B., M. R. C. S. 

Assistant Medical Officer, Long Grove Asy- 
lum, Epsom 

THE conception of the subconscious 
has of recent years acquired a 
dominating position in psychia- 
try. The utility of this concep- 
tion in the co-ordination of our 
knowledge, and its fruitfulness in suggesting 
new lines of research, have become so obvi- 
ous, that the opposition which it at first 
aroused has been almost altogether over- 
come. Considerable disagreement, however, 
still exists as to the precise meaning to be 
ascribed to the term. What is the nature of 
a subconscious process — is it a physical or 

"No fact of abnormal experience can by itself prove 
that psychological and not a physiological explanation 
is needed; it is a philosophical problem which must 
be settled by principle before the explanation of the 
special facts begins." — Munsterberg. 
I02 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

mental phenomenon ? This and other similar 
questions constitute a fertile source of dis- 
pute, and the Symposium which recently ap- 
peared In this Journal showed the very di- 
vergent views held by some of the Leading 
psychologists and psychiatrists of the day. 

The present paper is an attempt to investi- 
gate the essential nature of this conception, 
to determine Its claims to a place In the struc- 
ture of modern science, and the position 
which must be assigned to it within that struc- 
ture. 

It will be profitable to first consider the 
more Important stages In the historical devel- 
opment of the theory of the subconscious. 
Our next step will be an enquiry concerning 
the characters which modern science demands 
that a conception shall possess in order to 
qualify it for admission within its portals. 
We shall then be in a position to consider 
how far the conception of the subconscious 
satisfies these demands, and to determine its 
place and function In psychology. 

The history of all thought has been domi- 
nated throughout by an essential tendency of 
the human mind — the endeavor to obtain con- 
tinuity. The mind abhors discontinuity as 
103 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

nature Is said to abhor a vacuum. It strives 
to bring every new experience Into line with 
the old, to do away with Inexplicable gaps, 
and to reduce Its world to a connected intelli- 
gible whole. Mythology, religion, and phil- 
osophical systems provide us with numerous 
examples of this constant endeavor. Science 
Is nothing but the same trend of thought be- 
come coherent and articulate. 

Now it was early seen In the history of 
philosophy that, among the contrasts to be 
observed between the physical and mental, 
one of the most prominent was the compara- 
tive discontinuity of the latter. The psychi- 
cal life made its appearance In an Irregular 
manner, in flashes of limited duration, and in 
the Intervals between these flashes it ap- 
peared to altogether cease to exist. In con- 
trast to this the material world seemed rela- 
tively continuous, permanent, and independ- 
ent of the individual. Hence, if the study of 
the mind was to be brought into line with the 
rest of our knowledge, an attempt had to be 
made to get rid of the apparent discontinuity 
and Irregularity of psychical experience. Such 
an attempt has formed an integral part of 
most philosophical systems. The method 
104 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

adopted by the earlier philosophers, how- 
ever, consisted mostly In Imaginative and fan- 
tastic constructions, which aimed solely at in- 
ternal coherence, and which had but little re- 
lation to the facts. It was only after the 
method of the Inductive sciences had long 
demonstrated Its utility in other branches of 
knowledge, that an endeavor was made to 
apply it to the sphere of psychology. 

The first serious contribution to the filling 
up of the gaps in the psychical series was 
made by Leibnitz, who demonstrated that 
our conscious life contains small elements ly- 
ing outside its main stream, but which never- 
theless produce an effect by a process of sum- 
mation and combination. Schopenhauer ( i ) 
thought that a large number of our sense per- 
ceptions were the result of unconscious pro- 
cesses of reasoning — and the same theory 
was propounded In a more exact form by 
Helmholtz (2). By this period, therefore, 
the attempt to bridge the Intervals In the psy- 
chical series by processes of unconscious 
thought had taken definite shape. 

The question of the subconscious first, how- 
ever, became prominent with the publication 
of Hartmann's 'Thilosophle des Unbewus- 
105 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

sten," in 1868. The Intense enthusiasm with 
which this work was greeted in the most var- 
ied quarters affords a striking demonstration 
of that hunger for continuity whose existence 
we have already noted. Hartmann con- 
ceived the subconscious as a second personal- 
ity concealed beneath the surface of our or- 
dinary consciousness, but precisely compara- 
ble to the latter in Its structure and functions. 
He appeals to this hypothetical being when- 
ever there Is a gap in the chain of visible 
causation, and endows it with properties of a 
really startling kind. "Let us not despair," 
he says, "at having a mind so practical and 
so lowly, so unpoetical and so little spiritual ; 
there is within the innermost sanctuary of 
each of us a marvellous something of which 
we are unconscious, which dreams and prays 
while we labor to earn our dally bread" (3). 
Hartmann's work is of historical Importance 
on account of the stimulus it provided to 
further investigation, but his use of the con- 
cept of the unconscious was so unbridled that 
the value of his actual results is almost alto- 
gether nullified. James has described his 
theory as a "tumbling ground for whimsies," 
and Hoffding remarks, "We may say of it, 
106 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

as Galileo said of the appeal to an almighty 
will, it explains nothing because it explains 
everything" (4). 

Some of the most important advances in 
the historical development of the subcon- 
scious have been furnished by the French 
School of Morbid Psychology during the lat- 
ter part of the nineteenth century, initiated 
under Charcot and Ribot, and culminating in 
the work of Janet. In his classical "Automa- 
tisme Psychologique" the latter demon- 
strated that a large number of morbid phe- 
nomena can be adequately explained by as- 
suming the existence of dissociated mental 
elements altogether outside the sphere of the 
personality. 

Morton Prince has further developed Ja- 
net's point of view. He divides psychologi- 
cal material into that of which the individual 
is personally conscious, and that of which he 
is not personally conscious. Those experi- 
ences are personally conscious which are syn- 
thesized in the "personality." The experi- 
ences of which the individual is not personal- 
ly conscious are further divided into co-con- 
scious and unconscious. Co-conscious corre- 
sponds in the main to Janet's "subconscious" 
107 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

— actively functioning ideas dissociated from 
the personality. Under unconscious are in- 
cluded the phenomena of memory, and in 
general all the ideas, traces, etc., which arc 
not at the moment actively functioning, and 
which are to be regarded as mere physiologi- 
cal residua. Any of these latter may at any 
time become conscious or co-conscious. Dr. 
Prince considers that the essential character 
of a co-conscious idea consists in the fact that 
it leads an autonomous existence, and is not 
dependent upon the ego-complex. Co-con- 
scious, therefore, does not necessarily imply 
that the ego is unaware of the idea in ques- 
toin. Thus, in the well-known case described 
in "The Dissociation of a Personality," one 
personality knows all the thoughts and ac- 
tions of a second, but considers them to be 
those of another being whom, indeed, she re- 
gards with unconcealed dislike. This exten- 
sion of the m.eaning of Janet's conception is 
very important, and enables us to throw more 
light upon the analogous manifestations oc- 
curring in paranoia. 

The most modern development of the doc- 
trine of the subconscious is to be found in the 
works of Freud, Jung, and the Zurich School. 
io8 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

Their conception is totally different from 
those enumerated above, far more different 
than is generally supposed. This point will 
be better appreciated after a consideration of 
certain philosophical questions, which will 
subsequently be discussed. 

We have seen that the concept of the sub- 
conscious mind has gradually developed as a 
result of the demand for continuity in the psy- 
chical series. This same demand for con- 
tinuity has, however, led to an endeavor to 
solve the difficulty in an altogether different 
manner. Certain philosophers asserted that 
the psychical was unreal, a mere epiphenom- 
enal product of the physical, and that nothing 
but the material existed. The brain was con- 
sidered to secrete thought as the liver se- 
cretes bile. This school reached its zenith in 
the materiahsm of Moleschott and Biichner 
— a crude and naive philosophy now general- 
ly discredited. Later authorities, however, 
while admitting the reality of the psychical, 
denied that it could be made amenable to the 
method of science. Thus Karl Lange re- 
quired that all psychological definitions 
should be replaced by physiological, and 
Miinsterberg asserted that "mental facts, as 
IQ9 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

they are not quantitative, cannot enter into 
any causal relation" (5). It will be seen, 
therefore, that these authorities consider that 
so long as we are dealing with psychical facts 
there can be no question of causation or of 
science. They must be first translated into 
physiological terms, and it will then be pos- 
sible to formulate laws concerning them, and 
thus to incorporate them into the structure of 
our knowledge. This school has been aptly 
described by Hoffding as virtually wishing to 
abolish psychology in order to convert it in- 
to a science. For the exponents of this theo- 
ry the question of the subconscious does not 
exist — consciousness and subconsciousness 
are alike to be reduced to physiological terms, 
and the difference between them consists 
merely in a varying mode of combination of 
the cerebral elements. 

Certain other authorities adopt a compro- 
mise — they are ready to consider conscious- 
ness psychologically, but the subconscious is 
for them nothing but an inappropriate name 
for brain processes which have no psycholog- 
ical accompaniment. 

The main question at issue between these 
various schools is, therefore, whether the 
1 10 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

subconscious is to be regarded as a brain fact 
or as a mind fact, whether it is a subject for 
physiology or for psychology. The present 
paper endeavors to show that this question is 
in itself based upon a misconception and that 
its solution becomes at once obvious when the 
meaning of the terms is correctly apprehend- 
ed. 

As a preliminary measure it will be neces- 
sary to temporarily diverge from our main 
subject, and to shortly consider the general 
properties of scientific concepts. 

The philosophical consideration of the 
groundwork of science is a growth of com- 
paratively recent years. The earlier scien- 
tists contented themselves with practical re- 
sults, and did not consider the foundations 
upon which they were building. During the 
latter part of the nineteenth century, how- 
ever, the need for a precise formulation and 
definition of these foundations began to make 
itself felt. Hence there arose a school of 
critical philosophy unique amongst philoso- 
phical creeds in the fact that its exponents 
have been men eminent in the scientific world 
— ^Clark-Maxwell, Ostwald, Mach, Karl 
Pearson. Pearson's "Grammar of Science" 
III 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

remains the finest vindication in the English 
language of the principles, aims, and methods 
of modern science. The short exposition 
which follows is an endeavor to cull the es- 
sential points from its pages. But limitations 
of space prevent more than a short summary 
of the principal conclusions being given, and 
for the demonstration of their validity the 
reader must be referred to the original work. 
Science is characterized, not by its content 
but by its method of investigation — it em- 
braces the whole field of knowledge and is as 
applicable to history as it is to chemistry. It 
deals, not with a fabulous entity called "mat- 
ter," but with the content of the human mind, 
and acknowledges its incapacity to deal with 
anything which forms no part of that con- 
tent. The material of science is therefore 
human experience, what James calls "the flux 
of sensible reality." In other words, phe- 
nomena, of whatever sort or kind they may 
happen to be, constitute the material, while 
science is simply our method of treating this 
material. Now it is found that human ex- 
perience does not take place in an entirely 
haphazard and chaotic manner, but that the 
events follow one another with more or less 

112 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

regularity and order. This is the principle 
of the uniformity of nature. The aim of 
science is to find a means of proceeding from 
one point of experience to another with the 
least exertion of mental energy, in other 
words to achieve an "economy of thought." 
Its method is, firstly, to take some portion of 
human experience and to classify the facts 
found therein into sequences; secondly, to 
find some simple treatment which will re- 
sume an indefinite number of sequences in a 
single formula. Such a formula constitutes a 
scientific law. The law is the more funda- 
mental the wider the range of facts which it 
resumes. It is not a mythological entity, it 
is merely a construction of the human mind 
to enable it to deal better with its experience. 
If we examine any scientific law in order to 
determine its essential nature, we find that it 
has no immediate reference to sense impres- 
sions, or, in other words, to phenomenal 
reality, but is purely ideational or conceptual 
in character. The meaning of this statement 
will be made clearer by taking an example, e. 
g., Newton's law that "every particle attracts 
every other particle." Now a particle is not 
a sense-impression; it is defined as an infinite- 

113 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ly small portion of matter, that is to say, a 
pure idea, formed by carrying what is given 
in sense impressions to a conceptual limit in 
the mind. "Newton is here dealing with con- 
ceptual notions, for he never saw, nor has 
any physicist since his time ever seen, individ- 
ual particles, or been able to examine how the 
motion of two such particles is related to 
their position" (6). Similarly geometry, 
with its points, straight lines, and surfaces, is 
dealing with entities which are frankly ac- 
knowledged to be conceptual in character, 
and to have no real existence in the world of 
sense impressions. The physical conceptions 
of the atom and the ether are precisely anal- 
ogous in their nature. We find, therefore, 
that science does not profess to mirror some 
hypothetical universe lying altogether outside 
the human mind, but simply to provide a con- 
ceptual model, a "conceptual shorthand," by 
aid of which we can resume our sense im- 
pressions and predict future occurrences. 
"The physicist forms a conceptual model of 
the universe by aid of corpuscles. These 
corpuscles are only symbols for the compo- 
nent parts of perceptual bodies, and are not 
to be considered as resembling definite per- 
114 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ceptual equivalents. We conceive them to 
move in the manner which enables us most 
accurately to describe the sequences of our 
sense impressions. This manner of motion 
is summed up in the so-called law of motion" 
( 7 ) . We therefore reach the conclusion that 
science is simply a mode of conceiving things. 
The justification of science lies precisely in 
the fact that it does enable us to resume our 
sense impressions and predict future occur- 
rences ; its value as truth lies in its value as a 
working hypothesis by which we may be- 
come the masters of phenomena. 

Now there may be more than one mode of 
conceiving the same things, and which mode 
we adopt may depend on the practical neces- 
sities of the moment. Thus the mathemati- 
cian insists on regarding bodies as bounded 
by continuous surfaces, whereas the physicist 
is compelled to regard them as bounded by 
discontinuous atoms. Neither of these modes 
is more true than the other; the question is 
merely which one has the greatest practical 
value in the particular sphere of thought in 
question. 

Armed with these conceptions let us now 
diredt our attention to those fields which 
115 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

more particularly concern us, and firstly let 
us consider the problem of the physical and 
the mental. What, in fact, is the difference 
between physics and psychology? We are us- 
ually told that there are two orders of phe- 
nomena, the physical and the mental, two 
series which are so qualita:tively different that 
the passage from one to the other is unthink- 
able. Concerning the relation between these 
two series innumerable philosophical battles 
have been waged, and science must approach 
the question with a due regard for the meta- 
physical quicksands which await her on every 
side. It was pointed out by Bishop Berkeley 
that sense impressions are the only things of 
which we have any immediate knowledge, 
and modern science, having with some diffi- 
culty duly digested this fact, has discarded 
the pretence that it is engaged in a research 
into "things in themselves," and has relegat- 
ed the latter to the limbo of useless figments. 
Being entirely pragmatic in its ideals, and 
having a criterion of validity measured solely 
by utility, it recognizes that its field is the 
content of the human mind, neither more nor 
less. The modern scientist cannot therefore 
be accused of sharing the vulgar conception 
ii6 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

that "reality" consists of "material sub- 
stance," which by means of "energy and 
force" acts on "spiritual substance," giving 
rise in the latter to "sensations" which mir- 
ror the external reality. What, then, does 
he mean when he distinguishes between the 
mental and the material? The answer is that 
he means two different modes of conceiving 
human experience. On the phenomenal plane 
the physicist and the psychologist are dealing 
with precisely the same entities, sense impres- 
sions; the distinction between them lies in 
their different conceptual methods of resum- 
ing these sense impressions so as to express 
them in simple formulae. The physicist re- 
sumes his sense impressions by means of a 
conceptual model involving space and time, 
whereas the psychologist regards them as act- 
ual or potential constituents of a conscious- 
ness. As Mach (8) puts it, there is a "change 
of direction" in their methods of research. 
The ultimate goal of the physicist is a com- 
plete description of the universe in terms of 
motion or mechanism, the ultimate goal of 
the psychologist is "personality." Neither 
method is in itself better, more perfect, or 
more real than the other, both have an equal 
117 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

right to be incorporated into the structure of 
science, comparison between them can only 
be made on the grounds of utiHty. We are 
only entitled to ask by which method we are 
better enabled to resume our experience of 
the past and to predict our experience of the 
future. And the only answer to this question 
which it is possible to give in the present 
state of knowledge is that both methods are 
of value, and that neither can be abandoned 
in favor of the other. 

For the present the physiologist and the 
psychologist must be allowed to proceed 
along their respective roads. But there must 
be no jumping from one mode of conception 
to the other. The physiologist must not in- 
troduce a psychological conception into his 
chain of cause and effect, nor must the psy- 
chologist fill up the gaps in his reasoning with 
cells and nerve currents. The former error 
is comparatively rarely met with, the latter 
is unfortunately only too common. No phy- 
siologist would consent to admit "ideas" as 
active elements in the sequence of changes 
which take place in the nervous system. He 
simply points out that he has no use for such 
a conception, and that, so far from helping 
ii8 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

him in his explanation of phenomena, it viti- 
ates his reasoning, and destroys the validity 
of all his former concepts. The psychologist, 
on the other hand, is a weaker vessel ; he less 
commonly belongs to what James has termed 
the ''tough-minded" school of philosophy. 
He is usually prepared to humbly admit that 
the phenomena of memory are adequately ex- 
plained by the potential physical energy of a 
brain cell, and does not venture to suggest 
that the potential psychical energy of an idea 
is a conception just as valid, and with pre- 
cisely the same claim or lack of claim to real 
existence.* 

The distinction between the phenomenal 
and conceptual which underlies the principles 

*This exposition of the method of science is mainly 
extracted from a paper by the author, entitled "A 
Philosophy of Psychiatry" (Journal of Mental Science, 
July, 1908), which contains a more detailed investiga- 
tion of the scientific basis of Psychiatry. The term 
"sense-impression" has been used for the sake of sim- 
plicity. It can no longer be maintained, however, that 
the mind contains nothing but sensory elements. 
Thought and emotion involve factors which cannot 
be reduced to terms of sensation, in the proper mean- 
ing of that word. To be strictly accurate, "element of 
experience" should be substituted for "sense-impres- 
sion" in the above description. 
119 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

given above, Is of fundamental importance. 
Anything which can be experienced is a phe- 
nomenal fact — a scientific concept is a con- 
struction of the mind which cannot be exper- 
ienced at all. A nerve fibre is a phenomenal 
fact, the nerve current which traverses it is a 
conception. The nerve current is not a por- 
tion of our experience, we only experience 
the results which we ascribe to it; in other 
words, we invent the nerve current to explain 
the phenomenal result. Similarly colors, 
chemical substances, falling bodies are phe- 
nomena; ether waves, atoms, the force of 
gravity are conceptions. Precisely the same 
distinction is met with in the scientific treat- 
ment of the psychological series, a fact which 
we shall hope to subsequently demonstrate. 

It is only within recent years that morbid 
psychology has become amenable to the 
method of science. It was necessary that ob- 
jectives should replace Introspective psychol- 
ogy, and that the presence of certain external 
signs should be regarded as indicating the 
presence of certain conscious processes, a de- 
duction from analogy which every man 
makes when he talks to any other man. With- 
out this assumption any scientific treatment 

120 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

of the mental processes of the insane was ob- 
viously impossible. It is needless to point 
out that psychology must also posulate the 
existence of an absolute determinism within 
the psychical series. The law of causation 
forms the essentiaL basis of the method of 
science. 

Our conception of the nature of science, 
and its relation to psychology, may therefore 
be summarized as follows: 

( 1 ) The psychical and the physical are 
two different modes of conceiving human ex- 
perience. 

(2) From the point of view of science we 
are compelled to postulate an absolute de- 
terminism within each of these modes. 

(3) The method of science is applicable 
to either mode. It consists in the more or 
less arbitrary division of phenomenal exper- 
ience into artificial elements, and the construc- 
tion of laws regulating the interaction of 
these elements. The sole justification of 
these laws consists in the fact that they en- 
able us to resume and predict our experience, 
and hence to achieve an "economy of 
thought." 

(4) Science does not claim that the ele- 

121 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ments with which it deals necessarily have 
perceptual equivalents, and it may ascribe 
properties to certain of these elements which 
are even contradictory to all perceptual ex- 
perience, e. g., a weightless and frictionless 
ether. The constructions of science are 
therefore largely conceptual in character, 
and must be sharply distinguished from the 
phenomena which constitute our actual ex- 
perience. 

(5) The various elements entering into a 
conceptual construction must all be of the 
same mode, they mxay be either physical or 
psychical, but cannot consist in a mixture of 
the two. 

We are now In a position to return to our 
main theme, and to consider in the light of 
first principles the various doctrines of the 
subconscious so far enunciated. 

It is at once obvious that we must funda- 
mentally disagree with those authorities who 
regard the subconscious as a brain fact and 
not as a mind fact. Such a view involves that 
jumping from one mode of conception to 
the other, from the psychological to the phy- 
siological which we have seen to be incom- 
patible with the method of science. A con- 

122 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ception must be In the same terms as the 
phenomena which it is designed to connect. 
We cannot conceive cells and fibres as the 
connection between two ideas. The concep- 
tions of psychology must all be constructed 
within the psychical series. Only in this way 
can psychology have the same air as its sister 
sciences, the construction of a conceptual 
model which will enable us to resume our 
past and to predict our future experience. 
The conception of the subconscious has been 
devised by the psychologist to explain certain 
psychological phenomena — it must be re- 
garded as a psychological conception. 

For the same reasons memory must also be 
regarded as a psychological conception, a 
conception constructed to fill up the gaps in 
the phenomenal psychic series. It Is, of 
course, true that memory is not Itself a phe- 
nomenal psychic fact, we only experience the 
recurrence of a certain mental process — we 
assume, in order to satisfy our demand for 
continuity, that it has In some way existed 
during the interval, and we invent the con- 
ception of memory to explain this continued 
existence. To the reader who has not ade- 
quately grasped the essential principles of 
123 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

the modern philosophy of science this may 
appear to be a very unsatisfactory explana- 
tion of memory. He may object that if this 
is all that psychology can say in the matter he 
would prefer to adopt the physiological point 
of view, and to regard memory as the con- 
servation of traces in the brain. But he will 
find that the physiological conception of 
memory is no more a phenomenal fact than 
the psychological. He will find himself us- 
ing such terms as "nervous energy/' "per- 
meability of paths," and other purely concep- 
tual ideas, and he will finally begin to realize 
that his "conserved trace" is merely a con- 
ception invented to resume the fact that a 
certain brain phenomenon is capable of re- 
peating itself. Translating memory into the 
physical series does not make it a phenome- 
nal fact, it must inevitably remain a concep- 
tion. And if memory from both points of 
view is merely a conception, then surely if 
we are talking of the recurrence of mental 
phenomena it is a psychological conception. 
Both in this case and in that of the subcon- 
scious no useful purpose is served by sud- 
denly jumping into the other series, and all 
hope of discovering a comprehensive scien- 
124 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

tific law is ipso facto abolished. To maintain 
that the subconscious is a brain fact and not 
a mind fact is precisely analogous to main- 
taining that the law of gravity is a psycholog- 
ical conception and not a physical concep- 
tion * 



*Munsterberg (see Chapter One) has objected that 
"Those who insist that the memory idea presupposes a 
lasting mental disposition and cannot be explained by 
physiological after-effect, only forget that the same 
logic would demand a special mental disposition also 
for each new perception. The whole mystery of an 
idea entering into consciousness presents itself per- 
fectly every time when we use ous eyes or ears." We 
cannot admit that this is altogether true — the logical 
extension of the doctrines enunciated above would be 
simply that every new sensation might be also due to 
a previous "mental disposition." But science demands 
of its conceptions that they should satisfy the criterion 
of utility. We construct a conceptual memory and 
a conceptual subconscious in order to explain our ex- 
perience — the conception of a previous mental dispo- 
sition for each new sensation would serve no useful 
purpose whatever. We have to admit that sensations 
appear in a mind without any antecedents in that mind, 
and there can be no scientific objection to such an ad- 
mission. Such an objection could only have force if 
we postulated a law of conservation of psychic energy 
for each individual consciousness analogous to that 
holding in the material world. If we adopt panpsychism 
we may assert the existence of psychic antecedents to 
every sensation, but these would not, of course, exist 
125 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

The example of memory shows us that 
psychology, like its sister sciences, has its 
phenomena and conceptions. This is only a 
reiteration of the fact that sciences do not 
differ in their method, but only in their ma- 
terial. For the sake of simplicity we have 
so far spoken of the subconscious as if it 
were also conceptual in character, but this 
position now requires considerable qualifica- 
tion. 

It is of fundamental importance to recog- 
nize the fact that different authors when they 
speak of the subconscious not only speak 
from different points of view, but speak of 
totally different things. Morton Prince has 
pointed out that "the term subconscious is 
commonly used in the loosest and most repre- 
hensible way to define facts of a different 
order, interpretations of facts, and philoso- 
phical theories" (9). Hence it is meaning- 
less to predicate any statement of the subcon- 
scious as a whole without first defining the 



in the individual consciousness. In the present state 
of our knowledge such a speculation takes us beyond 
the limits of utility, and therefore of science. Pan- 
psychism may, however, be regarded as the Utopia of 
the psychologist. 

126 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

sense in which we are employing the term. 
Dr. Prince has enunciated its various mean- 
ings in his prefatory note. By Stout and 
others the term is used to denote those 
marginal portions of the field of conscious- 
ness which are not at the moment in the fo- 
cus of attention. Here subconscious merely 
means "dimly conscious.'* Myers ascribes 
to the subconscious various supernatural 
properties which take his conception altogeth- 
er beyond the limits of science. We have 
already dealt with Hartmann's picture of the 
subconscious as a second self comparable in 
all respects to the personal consciousness. 
The remaining meanings are best illustrated 
by the doctrines of Janet and Freud, and we 
must now proceed to examine these at some 
length. 

We have actual experience only of our own 
conscious phenomena — we deduce the con- 
scious phenomena of others by means of anal- 
ogy in two ways, directly from what they tell 
us through the medium of speech, indirectly 
from their actions.* Now the subconscious 

*It may be maintained that our knowledge of the 
conscious phenomena of others is therefore really con- 
ceptual in character, as we ourselves have no actual 
127 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

of Janet and his followers does not differ in 
its essential nature from any "conscious phe- 
nomena of others" with which we are ac- 
quainted — its existence is deduced on precisely 
the same grounds. This fact has been ably 
demonstrated by Dr. Prince in his contribu- 
tion to the symposium. If we hold a con- 
versation with a patient whose hand at the 
same moment writes of matters which are 
unknown to the personality, we speak of the 
subconscious phenomena attending the writ- 
ing for the very same reason that we speak 
of the conscious phenomena attending the 
patient's conversation. The distinction of 
the subconscious lies solely in the fact that it 
is dissociated from certain other "conscious 
phenomena of others," which we designate 
as the personality. The subconscious of Ja- 
net is, therefore, a phenomenal fact. It may 



experience of them. If conceptual is taken in an in- 
definitely wide sense this is of course true. But such 
deductions are on an altogether different plane from 
the conceptions of science. Relatively to the concep- 
tions of science they are phenomena, just as helium in 
the sun is a phenomenon — and both science and every- 
day life are compelled to treat them as such. To 
refuse to subscribe to this point of view would involve 
the adoption of Solipsism, 

128 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

be reduced in complexity to even a single idea, 
but it remains a phenomenon. Janet himself 
has remarked, "These diverse acts are iden- 
tical with those which we are accustomed to 
observe in persons like ourselves and to ex- 
plain by the intervention of intelligence. Un- 
doubtedly one may say that a somnambulist 
is only a mechanical doll, but then we must 
say the same of every creature. The term 
*doubling-of-consciousness' is not a philoso- 
phical explanation; It Is a simple clinical ob- 
servation of a common character which these 
phenomena present." (lo) 

If, however, we now turn to the views of 
Freud and Jung, we meet again with the 
phenomenon of dissociation, but we find add- 
ed thereto a mass of conceptions of an alto- 
gether different character. Limitations of 
space prohibit any adequate description of 
these doctrines, and we must therefore as- 
sume that our readers are already acquainted 
with their main features. We are here only 
concerned with the general conceptions un- 
derlying Freud's teaching, and these may, 
perhaps, be described in our own terminology 
as follows: The subconscious {unhewus- 
stsein) is regarded as a sea of unconscious 
129 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ideas and emotions, upon whose surface 
plays the phenomenal consciousness of which 
we are personally aware. These unconscious 
ideas are agglomerated into groups with ac- 
companying affects, the systems thus formed 
being termed ^'complexes." These complexes 
are regarded as possessing both potential 
and kinetic energy, and thus are capable of 
influencing the flow of phenomenal conscious- 
ness according to certain definite laws. The 
nature of their influence is dependent upon 
the relation they have to each other and to 
the normally dominating or ego complex. 
The complex may either cause the direct in- 
troduction into consciousness of its constitu- 
ent ideas and affect, or its influence may be 
distorted and indirect. The indirect effects 
may be of the most various types — symbol- 
isms, word forgetting, disturbance of the as- 
sociation processes, etc. A single idea or 
image in consciousness may be conditioned 
(constellated) by a multiplicity of uncon- 
scious complexes. 

All this is surely very different from any- 
thing that we have hitherto considered. In 
what does this difference consist? What is 
^n "unconscious idea" — is not this a mean- 
130 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ingless self-contradiction ? Has anybody ever 
experienced an "unconscious complex"? The 
answer to all these questions is simple — we 
are no longer on the phenomenal plane, we 
have ascended to the conceptual. Uncon- 
scious ideas and complexes are not phenom- 
enal facts, they are concepts, constructions 
devised to explain certain phenomena — they 
have not been found, they have been made. 
The implicit assumptions in Freud's doctrines 
may be expressed as follows : If we imagine 
certain entities which may be described as 
unconscious ideas and complexes. If we 
ascribe certain properties to these entities, 
and assume them to act according to certain 
laws — then we shall find that the results thus 
deduced will coincide with the phenomena 
which occur in actual human experience. This 
train of thought Is the analogue of that un- 
derlying all the great conceptual construc- 
tions of physical science — the atomic theory 
the wave theory of light, the law of gravity, 
and the modern theory of mendelian hered- 
ity. 

We thus owe to Freud the first consistent 
attempt to construct a conceptual psychology. 
The attempt is, moreover, a legitimate em- 
131 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ployment of the method of science, the con- 
struction of a conceptual model which will 
enable us to resume our experience. It is, of 
course, true that conceptions have to be em- 
ployed therein which cannot even be con- 
ceived as having a phenomenal existence. But 
we have seen that the same statement is 
equally true of the conceptions of physics. An 
unconscious idea is a phenomenal impossibil- 
ity just as a weightless, frictionless ether is a 
physical phenomenal impossibility. It is no 
more and no less unthinkable than the math- 
ematical conception^- 1. But objections of 
this kind do not in the least vitiate the use of 
phenomenal impossibilities as scientific con- 
cepts; the utility of such conceptions in physi- 
cal science will surely suffice to demonstrate 
this. It is only necessary to clearly under- 
stand that we are speaking of concepts and 
not of phenomena. 

Similarly when we speak of "complexes" 
we mean that it is convenient to conceive that 
ideas are bound together into systems, that 
these systems persist in the mind, although 
we are not conscious of them, and that they 
exert an influence upon the flow of phenome- 
nal consciousness of which we may or may 
132 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

not be aware. The complex may be said to 
be the psychological analogue of the concep- 
tion of force in physics. Strictly speaking, it 
can never itself become a fact of experience, 
a portion of phenomenal consciousness. Cer- 
tain ideas, affects, and conative tendencies be- 
longing to the complex may become facts of 
experience, we may be aware that we possess 
the complex — but the complex as a whole and 
as a directing force can never be actually ex- 
perienced, it is a pure conception. This may 
be seen, for example, in what may be termed 
the "political complex." When the party 
politician is called upon to consider a new 
measure, his verdict is largely determined by 
certain constant systems of ideas and trends 
of thought which we refer to as his "political 
complex." He may be honestly convinced 
that he is influenced solely by an unbiased 
consideration of the pros and cons of the 
measure in question, but the psychologist 
knows that this is not really so. Even if the 
politician is aware that he is biassed, this 
complicated system we have described can 
hardly be present as a whole to his mind. 
The "political complex" is not conscious, 
and it is equally impossible that it can be co- 
133 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

conscious. It Is merely a conception which 
enables us to explain the fact that when a 
certain man is confronted with a political sit- 
uation he will tend to act in a certain constant 
direction. 

We cannot agree with Dr. Prince when he 
says, "What is it that binds the mental ex- 
perience of an emotional railroad accident, 
an obsession, or of a subject or mood com- 
plex, or whatever kind of association it be in- 
to a system? The answer must be sought in 
the nervous system, not in the mind" (ii). 
We should prefer to say that it must' be 
sought in the conceptual sphere, not in the 
phenomenal. 

The conception of the complex is not, ex- 
cept in name, an altogether new departure in 
psychology. James's description of the vari- 
ous "selfs" (12) which determine a man's 
action can be immediately translated into the 
language of complexes. Similarly Hoffding, 
when discussing the theories of the Associa- 
tionlsts, has pointed out that "in the process 
of association it is the connected whole which 
exercises its powers over the single ideas" 

(13). 

The lack of a perceptual equivalent to 

134 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

many of Freud's conceptions is very striking 
when we peruse such a work as the "Traum- 
deutung." Here the individual dream image 
is conceived as being constellated by a large 
number of unconscious complexes — as a re- 
sult of the combination and interaction of 
these complexes the single image emerges in- 
to consciousness. Can we form any idea of 
a state of mind in which all this mass of men- 
tal elements is actually and phenomenally 
present? We have no evidence whatever of 
their phenomenal existence, such evidence as 
we had, for example, in the case of automatic 
writing previously considered. Freud has 
himself remarked on this point, "How can 
one picture to oneself the psychical condition 
during sleep? Do all the dream thoughts 
(subsequently elicited by analysis) actually 
exist together, or after one another, or do 
they constitute different contemporaneous 
streams finally coalescing? In my opinion, 
there is no necessity for us to attempt the 
construction of a picture of the psychic state 
during dream formation. We must not for- 
get that we are speaking of unconscious think- 
ing, and this may quite possibly proceed alto- 
gether differently from the conscious think- 
*3S 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ing with which we are acquainted" (14). 
Similar considerations apply to Freud's de- 
scription of the mechanism of word-forget- 
ting, mistakes in speaking, etc. 

It is this very aspect of Freud's teaching 
which has aroused so much opposition, be- 
cause the introduction of conceptual psychol- 
ogy has seemed so strange to those who have 
been accustomed to leave psychology- its phe- 
nomena, but to hand over its concepts to phy- 
siology. 

All these difficulties vanish at once when 
we remember that we are speaking of con.- 
cepts and not of phenomena. We are' no 
more called upon to picture what a mass of 
simultaneous unconscious ideas may be like, 
than a physicist is called upon to picture what 
an ether without weight and without friction 
may be like. It is of the utmost importance 
that the phenomenal and conceptual should 
be sharply distinguished when dealing with 
these questions. The neglect of this principle 
has. we believe, led to that confusion of 
terminology and treatment stigmatized by 
Dr. Prince in his communication upon the 
Subconscious at the recent Geneva Congress. 
It is best to limit the temi subconscious to the 

136 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

phenomenal facts demonstrated by Janet, and 
to speak of Freud's conception as the "un- 
conscious," the literal translation of the Ger- 
man Unbewusstsein. 

Scott (15) has objected that Freud's doc- 
trine has revived an atomistic theory of psy- 
chology — but all sciences are compelled to 
more or less arbitrarily divide phenomenal 
continua into artificial elements. They de- 
mand, in fact, a "continuity of conception to- 
gether with a conceived discontinuity of the 
material." The conceptual theory of the un- 
conscious is, moreover, constructed on an al- 
together different plane to the philosophical 
system of the old Associationists, in which 
the elements were regarded as real, and the 
unity of the whole as unreal. 

It must be definitely understood that we 
are making no attempt to demonstrate the 
validity of Freud's conceptions. Such an aim 
lies entirely outside the scope of the present 
paper. Our sole concern is to show that his 
conceptions are cast within the legitimate 
framework of science, and that they have all 
the properties which science demands that a 
concept shall have. But if this be so, then 
the validity of Freud's theories must be test- 
137 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ed by the method which has established all 
the conceptions of science, the method of 
experiment and verification. They cannot be 
proved or disproved by a priori considera- 
tions. The conceptions must be applied, and 
the results thus deduced must be compared 
with the results which are actually found. 
The truth of a scientific conception is neith- 
er more nor less than its utility in enabling us 
to resume and predict our experience. 

We must now proceed further and endeav- 
or to determine the relation between Janet's 
subconscious and Freud's unconscious. This 
relation is often held to be one of rivalry, but 
if our analysis of the two doctrines is correct, 
this view must be erroneous. There can be 
no rivalry between a description of the phe- 
nomenal facts, and a conceptual model con- 
structed to resume these facts. The phenom- 
enon of dissociation has not been disputed by 
Freud — on the contrary, it takes a prominent 
place amongst the circumstances which he de- 
sires to explain. *His work lies on a deeper 
plane, his aim is not a description of the 
facts, but the conceptual explanation of these 
facts. We have here, in fact, that progres- 
sion by which the method of science is invari- 

138 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

ably characterized. Firstly, the collection 
and classification of facts, represented here 
by the co-ordinated description of the phe- 
nomena of the subconscious or co-conscious; 
secondly, the construction of a conceptual 
model to explain these facts, represented by 
the theories of Freud. Precisely analogous 
advances are to be found in the history of 
physics. Kepler, for example, by classifying 
the successive positions in space of the plan- 
ets, demonstrated that each moved in an el- 
lipse, one of whose foci v/as occupied by the 
sun. Newton subsequently explained this 
fact by the construction of the law of gravity. 
It must be carefully observed that we have 
spoken throughout of the relation of Freud's 
doctrines to Janet's conception of the subcon- 
scious, not to Janet's work as a whole. There 
can be no question that this larger relation 
is to a considerable extent one of conflict. But 
this conflict only arises when Janet leaves the 
phenomenal plane and proceeds to construct 
conceptual generalizations. Thus his views 
on the essential nature of hysteria and psy- 
chasthenia, the separation of the latter as a 
distinct entity, the origin of obsessions, and 
other similar points — these cannot be recon- 
139 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

died altogether with the teaching of Freud. 
But whatever the ultimate verdict on these 
theories may be, Janet's indestructible monu- 
ment will always be his vindication of the psy- 
chological method, his demonstration of the 
phenomena of dissociation, and a description 
of the facts of hysteria which has never been 
excelled in the history of psychiatry. 

We are now in a position to summarize the 
results of our investigation: The word sub- 
conscious has been used by various authors 
to denote facts belonging to altogether differ- 
ent categories, and it is necessary in the inter- 
ests of clearness that a terminology should be 
devised which will obviate this confusion. Ex- 
cluding those speculative interpretations 
which do not enter into the field of science, 
these facts may be grouped under three 
heads. Firstly, the marginal elements of phe- 
nomenal consciousness (the subconscious of 
Stout) , secondly, dissociated portions of phe- 
nomenal consciousness (the co-conscious of 
Morton Prince, and the subconscious of Ja- 
net), thirdly, a non-phenomenal conceptual 
construction designed to explain the facts of 
phenomenal consciousness (the unconscious 
of Freud). All these form part of the ma- 
140 



SUBCONSCIOUS PHENOMENA 

terial of psychology, none of them form part 
of the material of physiology. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1. "Schopenhauer. Satz vom Grunde. 

2. H'elmholtz. Die Tatsachen in der Wahrnehmung. 

3. Hartmann. Das Unbewusste, quoted by Janet, 
JouRN. OF Abnorm. Psychol., June, 1907. 

4. Hoffding. Hisory of Philosophy, p. 583. 

5. Miinsterberg. Psychology and Life, p. 127. 

6. Pearson. Grammar of Science, 2d ed., p. 281. 

7. Ibid. 

8. Mach. "De la Physique et de la Psychologic," 
L'annee Psychologique, 1906. 

9. Morton Prince. "The Subconscious," Comtes 
Rendus, Geneva Congress of Psychology, 1909. 

10. Janet. "The Subconscious," Journ. of Abnorm. 
Psychol., June, 1907. 

11. Prince. "The Unconscious," Journ. of Abnorm. 
Psychol., Oct., 1908. 

12. James. Principles of Psychology, Vol. i, p. 291. 

13. Hoffding. The Problems of Philosophy, p. 18. 

14. Freud. Die Traumdeutung, p. 205. 

15. Scott. "An Interpretation of the Psycho-analytic 
Method in Psychotherapy," Journ. of Abnorm. Psy- 
chol,, Feb., 1909. 



141 



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